This document discusses three topics: 1) Embodiment and how virtual reality can achieve a sense of embodiment through representations of the user's body. 2) Cognition and how our cognition depends on our body schema, which virtual reality systems aim to replicate. 3) Intention preservation, which is important for social interactions but difficult as intentions are social constructs that require understanding the user.

1. Embodiment, Cognition and
Intention Preservation
Anthony Steed
University College London, London, UK
HITLab, Christchurch, New Zealand
Microsoft Research, Redmond, USA

2. AI & VR
Steed & Slater
VRAIS 96
Giunchi, James & Steed
Expressive 2018

4. • Embodiment and how to achieve it
• Cognition and how it should depend on body
schema
• Intention preservation and how this is a social
construct

5. Why is Virtual Reality Interesting?

6. Response to Threat
• At a specific time, the
lamp falls over
• The ball and hole have
been pre-cued so that
the hand is in the
region where the lamp
falls
• Looking for a stress
response
Yuan, Steed, et al., 2010

7. Self-Avatar with gesture
allowed
Steed, Pan, et al., 2016

8. Self-Avatar with gesture not
allowed

9. Method
• Procedure
– Practice (3 trials); Section 1 (10 trials); Section 2 (10 trials)
15 seconds 15 seconds 10 seconds 10 seconds 5seconds
(a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

10. Result - Letter Recall
• In the self-avatar condition,
participants remembered
28% more letter pairs when
gesturing than when not
gesturing
• In the without a self-avatar
condition, the difference
between the two gesture
conditions was not
significant
Self-avatar
Gesture
Allowed
Error
Bars:
95% CI
Not allowed
Self-avatarNo self-avatar
MeanProportionofcorrectly
rememberedletterpairs
0.80
0.60
0.40
0.20
0.00
0.49 0.51
0.44
0.72

11. Failures?

12. • Challenge 1: how to learn about the user to create
an embodiment, visual quality, behavior, gestures,
clothing, belongings
• The brain is highly plastic BUT also very good at
noticing discrepancies
• High individual variance in reaction to self-
representation

13. Murcia-Lopez, Steed, 2018

14. • Challenge 2: learn how the user interacts with the
world and replace absent cues appropriately.
Dexterity of hands seems to be a specific
challenge
• At the current time, VR is failing to reproduce
certain real-world behaviours
• However, knowledge that something isn’t real
doesn’t necessarily change their behaviour

15. Solving the Cube
Schroeder, Steed, et al., 2001 (and other papers)

16. Solving the Cube

17. Solving the Cube

18. Pan & Steed, 2017

23. • Challenge 3: intention builds upon knowledge of
the user and is a social construct
• There is complex meaning in collaborative
behaviours, can we interpret it and support it
transparently

24. Thanks
A.Steed@ucl.ac.uk