Title: Embody Me: Achieving Proxy Agency through Embodiment in Mixed Reality

Supervision Team: Carol O’Sullivan, TCD / Gearóid Ó Laighin, UoG

Description: An important factor in achieving believable and natural interactions in Virtual and Mixed Reality systems is the sense of personal agency, i.e., when a user feels that they are both controlling their own body and affecting the external environment e.g., picking up a ball and throwing it. The most natural way to give a sense of agency and control to a user is to enable them to use their own natural body motions to effect change in the environment. However, in restricted spaces or if the user has a disability, this may not always be possible. In this PhD project, we will investigate the effects of different strategies for non-direct agency in the environment, from simple device inputs, through to controlling an embodied virtual agent. This will involve animating the motions of a virtual avatar, and controlling the motions of this avatar using a variety of different methods (e.g., game controller, gesture, voice).