Virtual Body Swap: A New Feasible Tool to Be Explored in Health and Education

Abstract

Virtual reality has been widely explored to immerse users in environments other than those considered to be their surrounding realities. We discuss the possibility of immersion not in another environment but in another person's body. The power of body swap illusion opens up a great deal of possibilities and applications in several areas, such as neuroscience, psychology, and education. For this experiment, we used a low budget system that reproduces a person's head movements as if one's own head were in another body viewed through a head mounted display (HMD) while having body agency, i.e., controlling the movements of another real body as if it was a "real avatar". In this pilot study we describe the tool in details and discuss its feasibility and preliminary results based on the analysis of the participants' perceptions collected through validated questionnaires and in-depth interviews. We observed that the system does promote higher levels of realism and involvement ("presence") compared with an immersion experience without body agency. Moreover, spontaneous declarations by the participants also showed how impactful this experience may be. Future applications of the tool are discussed.