Changing body ownership using visual metamorphosis

This paper presents a study of using supernumerary arms experience in virtual reality applications. In this study, a system was developed that alternates user's body scheme and motion mapping in real-time when the user interacts with virtual contents. User arms and hands are tracked and mapped into several virtual arms instances that were generated from user's first point of view (FPV), and are deviated from his physical arms position at different angles. Participants reported a strong sense of body ownership toward the extra arms after interacting and holding virtual contents using them. Our finding is body ownership perception can be altered based on the condition used. Also, one interesting finding in this preliminary experiment is that the participants reported strong ownership toward the arm that actually is not holding the virtual object. This study contributes in the fields of augmented bodies, multi-limbs applications, as well as prosthetic limbs.