ShareYourReality: Investigating Haptic Feedback and Agency in Virtual Avatar Co-embodiment
<|reference_start|>ShareYourReality: Investigating Haptic Feedback and Agency in Virtual Avatar Co-embodiment: Virtual co-embodiment enables two users to share a single avatar in Virtual Reality (VR). During such experiences, the illusion of shared motion control can break during joint-action activities, highlighting the need for position-aware feedback mechanisms. Drawing on the perceptual crossing paradigm, we explore how haptics can enable non-verbal coordination between co-embodied participants. In a within-subjects study (20 participant pairs), we examined the effects of vibrotactile haptic feedback (None, Present) and avatar control distribution (25-75%, 50-50%, 75-25%) across two VR reaching tasks (Targeted, Free-choice) on participants Sense of Agency (SoA), co-presence, body ownership, and motion synchrony. We found (a) lower SoA in the free-choice with haptics than without, (b) higher SoA during the shared targeted task, (c) co-presence and body ownership were significantly higher in the free-choice task, (d) players hand motions synchronized more in the targeted task. We provide cautionary considerations when including haptic feedback mechanisms for avatar co-embodiment experiences.<|reference_end|>
@article{venkatraj2024shareyourreality:,
    title={ShareYourReality: Investigating Haptic Feedback and Agency in Virtual
  Avatar Co-embodiment},
    author={Karthikeya Puttur Venkatraj, Wo Meijer, Monica
  Perusqu'ia-Hern'andez, Gijs Huisman and Abdallah El Ali},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.08363},
    year={2024},
    doi={10.1145/3613904.3642425},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2403.08363},
    primaryClass={cs.HC cs.CY}
}