2019/07/11 by Andrey Krekhov, Krekhov, Andrey, Sebastian Cmentowski +3 · 1 voice · 2 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Computer Science · Social Sciences · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Geographies of human-animal interactions #Human-Animal Interaction Studies #Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) #Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts #cs.HC
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1907.05220
openalex publication_date 2019/07/11 · arxiv published 2019/07/11 · arxiv updated 2019/07/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Virtual reality offers the unique possibility to experience a virtual representation as our own body. In contrast to previous research that predominantly studied this phenomenon for humanoid avatars, our work focuses on virtual animals. In this paper, we discuss different body tracking approaches to control creatures such as spiders or bats and the respective virtual body ownership effects. Our empirical results demonstrate that virtual body ownership is also applicable for nonhumanoids and can even outperform human-like avatars in certain cases. An additional survey confirms the general interest of people in creating such experiences and allows us to initiate a broad discussion regarding the applicability of animal embodiment for educational and entertainment purposes.