Hand and Arm Ownership Illusion through Virtual Reality Physical Interaction and Vibrotactile Stimulations

Body awareness has important implications for the use of virtual reality (VR) and its effectiveness. This involves the senses of agency and body ownership, studied in the past by producing the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI). Recent studies reported the RHI on virtual environments (VE) by giving the participant synchronous 3D visual stimulation and passive tactile stimulation manually on the hidden real hand placed on a static position. In this paper we present a novel study of the RHI within highly dynamic VE sessions with synchronous pure virtual vibrotactile stimulation of the fingers. The hand/arm participant's movements are realistically reproduced on the VE and tactile stimulations are self-inflicted by the participant through actively touching the virtual objects. The results revealed that the RHI is possible in active, dynamic and fully multisensored VE sessions.

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