Martin GUY's PhD

Martin GUY’s PhD is entitled “Evaluation and Manipulation of Virtual Embodiment”, and took place between October 1st 2019 and February 2nd 2023. It was directed by Guillaume MOREAU and co-supervised by Camille JEUNET and by myself.

Summary:

In his Phd Thesis, Martin GUY tackles a very important issue in Immersive Virtual Reality, the sense of Virtual Embodiment nad how it an be evaluated. Virtual reality consists of immersing users in a virtual environment (VE) and allowing them to interact in real time with the content of it. In this VE, users can be represented by a virtual body called an avatar and feel this avatar to be their own body. This is called virtual embodiment (VEmb), characterized by three components: the senses of self-location (SoSL), agency (SoA), and body ownership (SoBO). VEmb can alter the perception of a user’s body or their behavior. However, the evaluation of VEmb is complicated, being a subjective phenomenon. The current consensus is to use standardized questionnaires, but these can only be conducted retrospectively and not continuously, and forces users to perform an additional task.

Martin’ thesis focuses on two areas. The first is the study of the interaction between the components of VEmb. Indeed, it is not yet clear how the three components interact with each other or whether one component is more important than the others. In a user study, we try to manipulate each component independently to allow a better evaluation of VEmb. This study paves the way for future experiments. The second axis is the search for neurophysiological markers of the SoA using electroencephalography (EEG). By analyzing EEG signals from Jeunet et al. 2018, we try to obtain a real-time assessment of this feeling as an alternative to questionnaires.

Publications:

• [Guy et al. 2022] M. GUY, C. JEUNET-KELWAY, G. MOREAU, J.-M. NORMAND. “Manipulating the Sense of Embodiment in Virtual Reality: a study of the interactions between the senses of agency, self-location and ownership”. In Proc. ICAT-EGVE 2022 - International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence and Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments, Yokohama, Japan, 2022. doi:10.2312/egve.20221281 Best Paper Award