Elucidation of the influence of body appearance in the integration of vision and proprioception and its application

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K21801
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Medium-sized Section 61:Human informatics and related fields
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Narumi Takuji 東京大学, 大学院情報理工学系研究科, 准教授 (70614353)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-07-30 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: バーチャルリアリティ / 多感覚統合 / アバタ / 身体所有感 / 行為主体感

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, we report for the first time that the anthropomorphism of avatars in virtual reality (VR) affects the threshold for detecting the misalignment of visual and proprioceptive senses, and explore the mechanism by which body appearance changes the multisensory integration of vision and proprioception. Utilizing the obtained knowledge, we proposed a method that places multiple hand avatars with different characteristics in a virtual environment and switches between them with the gaze, as a method that enables intuitive and accurate object manipulation in VR, taking multisensory integration into consideration. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by suggesting that efficiency and accuracy of object manipulation can be improved by using different hand avatars with different sizes, appearances, movement gains, etc. depending on the work area.

Free Research Field

バーチャルリアリティ

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究の学術的意義は，視覚を通じて知る手の位置と体性感覚を通じて知る手の位置を統合して尤もらしい身体の位置を推定する多感覚統合の過程において，身体の見かけという位置とは関係のない情報が視覚と体性感覚の統合のされ方に影響することをバーチャルリアリティを使った実験によって世界で初めて示し，それが身体所有感ではなく身体姿勢情報の尤度を介して身体定位に影響するためであることを示唆し，身体知覚研究に新たな知見を提供した点にある．さらに，この知見を活かして，さまざまな産業で活用が広がっているバーチャルリアリティ向けに直観的かつ作業精度の高い新たなユーザインタフェースを提案した点で社会的意義も高い．