Augmented Self: TowaRds effective Avatars in augmented reaLity – ASTRAL

Avatars, i.e. digital representations of users in a Virtual Environment (VE), are more and more present in our lives and in a very wide field of applications such as entertainment, medicine, education, etc. Avatars have been shown to improve the user presence and performances in immersive VEs, and even alter their perception abilities and judgement. They even have been shown to be able to elicit self-identification of users with their characteristics (morphological, cognitive, etc.), which can be reflected in changes in their behavior. This is characterized as the “Proteus Effect”. For instance, some founding works showed that participants embodied virtually in Albert Einstein's body were more performant when carrying out cognitive tasks. Interestingly, avatars are generally absent from most Augmented Reality (AR) simulations, possibly because users usually see their own body in such context and one could think that they do not need any further representation. However, integrating avatars in AR experiences could also dramatically extend their impact. Yet, adding avatars in AR also raises several strong scientific and technological challenges: how to efficiently replace the actual body of the user with an avatar? How to handle morphological differences between the virtual and the real selves, especially during interaction with the environments (physical and virtual)? Considering that how avatars are perceived in AR is still rather unknown as well, a lot of questions remain open. In this project, our objective is therefore to design compelling avatars in Augmented Reality and study their impact on the users. To do so, we will explore three main and interdependent scientific axes: 1) the synthesis of avatars in AR, 2) the interaction through avatars in AR, 3) the perception of avatars in AR.