Body Ownership in Virtual Reality

The sense of proximity to a virtual context requires a diverse set of cues that gives a participant a sense of presence in a virtual space. The goal of our research is to provide a sense of body ownership of a virtual entity represented by a humanoid avatar or other virtual manifestation of a surrogate in virtual reality environment for sharing not only a space but also an experience. In essence, we seek a sense of Presence that transports the operator to the space inhabited by the virtual avatar in a virtual space. To arouse this sense of presence in a virtual space, we are testing a hypothesis that seeing one's own body from a first person point-of-view in the remote context is a critical element of "being there." To achieve this we introduce a method to enhance the sensation of presence for the operator who inhabits a virtual avatar by increasing the sense of body ownership.