Bernhard Spanlang

Virtual Bodyworks SL

Background: Virtual reality (VR) interventions, based on cognitive behavioral therapy principles, have been proven effective as complementary tools in managing obesity and have been associated with promoting healthy behaviors and addressing body image concerns. However, they have not fully addressed certain underlying causes of obesity, such as a l...

BACKGROUND The current use of Virtual Reality (VR) interventions, based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy principles, has been proven effective as an additional component to standard psychological therapy for obesity. These interventions successfully promote healthy behaviors and address negative body image concerns. However, they have not fully addr...

Background Virtual reality (VR) interventions, based on cognitive behavioral therapy principles, have been proven effective as complementary tools in managing obesity and have been associated with promoting healthy behaviors and addressing body image concerns. However, they have not fully addressed certain underlying causes of obesity, such as a la...

Introduction People living with obesity (PLWO) often experience ambivalence when starting their change process towards a healthier lifestyle. Psychological treatments for obesity should resolve this ambivalence and help PLWO to explore their own reasons for change in line with their needs and values, as well as promote self-efficacy. Following the...

Urban-living individuals are exposed to many environmental factors that may combine and interact to influence mental health. While individual factors of an urban environment have been investigated in isolation, no attempt has been made to model how complex, real-life exposure to living in the city relates to brain and mental health, and how this is...

Introduction We aim to examine the usability of a Virtual Reality (VR) platform, called ConVRSelf, which has been designed to address the needs of People Living With Obesity (PLWO). Methods Fourteen participants with a desire to eat healthier and exercise more (6 normal weight and 8 PLWO; Mean age = 41.86, SD = 13.89) were assigned to the experime...

Introduction The integration of Motivational Interviewing (MI) with behavioural and psychological interventions for the treatment of obesity has the potential to improve health-related outcomes of patients in the long-term. Objectives Our objective is to examine the usability of a VR embodiment tool for treating obesity. Methods Fourteen particip...

Introduction Previous research has shown that it is feasible to integrate motivational interviewing techniques with behavioural and psychological interventions for the treatment of obesity. Moreover, these combined interventions have the potential to improve health-related outcomes of people living with obesity (PLWO) and to afford maintenance of b...

There is an alarming level of violence by police in the US towards African Americans. Although this may be rooted in explicit racial bias, the more intractable problem is overcoming implicit bias, bias that is non-conscious but demonstrated in actual behavior. If bias is implicit it is difficult to change through explicit methods that attempt to ch...

An altered sense of self-awareness and agency has been proposed to underlie symptoms of schizophrenia. In this study, we used the enfacement illusion paradigm - in which perception of another person's face leads to changes in perception of one's own peri-personal space - to examine the brain correlates of the sense of agency and its potential disru...

As part of the open sourcing of the Microsoft Rocketbox avatar library for research and academic purposes, here we discuss the importance of rigged avatars for the Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR, AR) research community. Avatars, virtual representations of humans, are widely used in VR applications. Furthermore many research areas ranging from cr...

Key points Embodiment of a virtual body was induced and its movements were controlled by two different brain−computer interface (BCI) paradigms – one based on signals from sensorimotor versus one from visual cortical areas. BCI‐control of movements engenders agency, but not equally for all paradigms. Cortical sensorimotor activation correlates with...

Agency is the attribution of an action to the self and is a prerequisite for experiencing responsibility over its consequences. Here we investigated agency and responsibility by studying the control of movements of an embodied avatar, via brain computer interface (BCI) technology, in immersive virtual reality. After induction of virtual body owners...

When faced with a personal problem people typically give better advice to others than to themselves. A previous study showed how it is possible to enact internal dialogue in virtual reality (VR) through participants alternately occupying two different virtual bodies – one representing themselves and the other Sigmund Freud. They could maintain a se...

The most robust and clear biological index differentiating persons with schizophrenia from healthy controls is the drastic reduction of the amplitude of their P300b event-related brain potential (ERP). However, the cause of that reduction remains obscure. Nevertheless, the P300b belongs to the family of the late posterior positivities (LPPs) which...

Background: Engaging, interactive, and automated virtual reality (VR) treatments might help solve the unmet needs of individuals with mental health disorders. We tested the efficacy of an automated cognitive intervention for fear of heights guided by an avatar virtual coach (animated using motion and voice capture of an actor) in VR and delivered...

Functional imaging studies have implicated the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus in cue-guided spatial navigation, but also many other regions. Furthermore, little is known about de-activations that take place during performance of navigation tasks, something that is of interest given that the hippocampus is a component of the default mode netw...

People generally show greater preference for members of their own racial group compared to racial out-group members. This type of ‘in-group bias’ is evident in mimicry behaviors. We tend to automatically mimic the behaviors of in-group members, and this behavior is associated with interpersonal sensitivity and empathy. However, mimicry is reduced w...

Background data and supplementary analysis. (DOCX)

The full data set in Microsoft Excel format. (XLSX)

Mental health problems are inseparable from the environment. With virtual reality (VR), computer-generated interactive environments, individuals can repeatedly experience their problematic situations and be taught, via evidence-based psychological treatments, how to overcome difficulties. VR is moving out of specialist laboratories. Our central aim...

Consumer 3D scanners and depth cameras are increasingly being used to generate content and avatars for Virtual Reality (VR) environments and avoid the inconveniences of hand modeling; however, it is sometimes difficult to evaluate quantitatively the mesh quality at which 3D scans should be exported, and whether the object perception might be affect...

When people see a life-sized virtual body (VB) from first person perspective in virtual reality they are likely to have the perceptual illusion that it is their body. Additionally such virtual embodiment can lead to changes in perception, implicit attitudes and behaviour based on attributes of the VB. To date the changes that have been studied are...

Advances in computer graphics algorithms and virtual reality (VR) systems, together with the reduction in cost of associated equipment, have led scientists to consider VR as a useful tool for conducting experimental studies in fields such as neuroscience and experimental psychology. In particular virtual body ownership, where the feeling of ownersh...

We describe a system that allows for controlling different robots and avatars from a real time motion stream. The underlying problem is that motion data from tracking systems is usually represented differently to the motion data required to drive an avatar or a robot: there may be different joints, motion may be represented by absolute joint positi...

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) typically generates the illusion in participants that they are in the displayed virtual scene where they can experience and interact in events as if they were really happening. Teleoperator (TO) systems place people at a remote physical destination embodied as a robotic device, and where typically participants have t...

Supporting procedures and methods. A number of procedures and methods are described in detail, including rat training, robot control, video and data streaming, and experimental procedures. (DOCX)

Computational and network requirements. This describes the technical computational requirements to execute the system described. (DOCX)

The first 200 seconds of rat and robot movements for 6 participant trials. The rat is represented by the blue square and path, and the human is represented by the red circle and path. Note that the sizes of the square representing the rat and the circle representing the robot are much smaller than would be if they were drawn to scale. Hence the vid...

Distance distributions in trials 1 and 2. This presents further analysis of the distances between the rat and human participants, and in particular there is a comparison between trials 1 and 2. (DOCX)

A human participant interacts with the rat represented as a virtual human character in immersive virtual reality. (MP4)

Multiple participants and animals. This describes what would be needed to extend the system to cater for multiple human and animal participants. (DOCX)

This paper describes a technique for garment simulation and collision detection implemented on modern Graphics Processors (GPU). It exploits a mass-spring cloth model with velocity modification approach to overcome the super-elasticity. Our novel algorithms for cloth-body and cloth-cloth collision detection and response are based on image-space int...

In order to rehearse for a play or a scene from a movie, it is generally required that the actors are physically present at the same time in the same place. In this paper we present an example and experience of a full body motion shared virtual environment (SVE) for rehearsal. The system allows actors and directors to meet in an SVE in order to reh...

In this paper, we present a new impostor-based representation for 3D animated characters supporting real-time rendering of thousands of agents. We maximize rendering performance by using a collection of pre-computed impostors sampled from a discrete set of view directions. Our approach differs from previous work on view-dependent impostors in that...

Learning motor skills is a complex task involving a lot of cognitive issues. One of the main issues consists in retrieving the relevant information from the learn-ing environment. In a traditional learning situation, a teacher gives oral explanations and performs actions to provide the learner with visual examples. Using virtual reality (VR) as a t...

Rendering detailed animated characters is a major limiting factor in crowd simulation. In this paper we present a new representation for 3D animated characters which supports output‐sensitive rendering. Our approach is flexible in the sense that it does not require us to pre‐define the animation sequences beforehand, nor to pre‐compute a dense set...

Background: Body change illusions have been of great interest in recent years for the understanding of how the brain represents the body. Appropriate multisensory stimulation can induce an illusion of ownership over a rubber or virtual arm, simple types of out-of-the-body experiences, and even ownership with respect to an alternate whole body. Her...

This paper presents an Animation Planning Mediator (APM) designed to synthesize anima-tions efficiently for virtual characters in real time crowd simulation. From a set of animation clips, the APM selects the most appropriate and modifies the skeletal configuration of each character to satisfy desired constraints (e.g. eliminating foot-sliding or r...

We describe a system that shows how to substitute a person's body in virtual reality by a virtual body (or avatar). The avatar is seen from a first person perspective, moves as the person moves and the system generates touch on the real person's body when the avatar is touched. Such replacement of the person's real body by a virtual body requires a...

We present a method that maps collisions on a dynamic deformable virtual character designed to be used for tactile haptic rendering in Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR). Our method computes exact intersections by relying on the use of programmable graphics hardware. Based on interference tests between deformable meshes (an avatar controlled by a huma...

An experiment was carried out to examine the impact on electrodermal activity of people when approached by groups of one or four virtual characters at varying distances. It was premised on the basis of proxemics theory that the closer the approach of the virtual characters to the participant, the greater the level of physiological arousal. Physiolo...

This paper introduces the concept and discusses the implications of immersive journalism, which is the production of news in a form in which people can gain first-person experiences of the events or situation described in news stories. The fundamental idea of immersive journalism is to allow the participant, typically represented as a digital avata...

A new definition of immersion with respect to virtual environment (VE) systems has been proposed in earlier work, based on the concept of simulation. One system (A) is said to be more immersive than another (B) if A can be used to simulate an application as if it were running on B. Here we show how this concept can be used as the basis for a psycho...

This paper introduces a system for real-time physiological measurement, analysis, and metaphorical visualization within a virtual environment (VE). Our goal is to develop a method that allows humans to unconsciously relate to parts of an environment more strongly than to others, purely induced by their own physiological responses to the virtual rea...

Scatter diagram of the questionnaire responses of mirror by body, classified by M. Some of the coordinates occur more than once so that the plotted points overlay one another. Points above the diagonal line have mirror > body. (1.97 MB TIF)

The post experiment questionnaire. (0.02 MB PDF)

Supporting Methods. (0.02 MB PDF)

Estimated probabilities for the questionnaire responses on the touch related questions. These are shown for four combinations of the factors, each with M = MS. The results are almost identical for MS′. The left panel shows the results for touch (Q5), and the right woman (Q10). There are no 0 scores for touch. (4.74 MB TIF)

The video shows some extracts from the scenario, mainly from the first person perspective position of the virtual girl, and also from the 3PP condition. There is no sound on the video although the subjects would have heard the music from the virtual TV (spatialised). The sound is not included for copyright reasons. (20.46 MB MOV)

Background: Altering the normal association between touch and its visual correlate can result in the illusory perception of a fake limb as part of our own body. Thus, when touch is seen to be applied to a rubber hand while felt synchronously on the corresponding hidden real hand, an illusion of ownership of the rubber hand usually occurs. The illu...

Asynchronous condition. Real hand in the data glove and virtual hand in the asynchronous condition. (4.53 MB MPG)

Synchronous condition. Real hand in the data glove and virtual hand in the synchronous condition. (3.43 MB MPG)

Our body schema gives the subjective impression of being highly stable. However, a number of easily-evoked illusions illustrate its remarkable malleability. In the rubber-hand illusion, illusory ownership of a rubber-hand is evoked by synchronous visual and tactile stimulation on a visible rubber arm and on the hidden real arm. Ownership is concurr...

This paper reports an experiment that investigated people's body ownership of an avatar that was observed in a virtual mirror. Twenty subjects were recruited in a within-groups study where 10 first experienced a virtual character that synchronously reflected their upper-body movements as seen in a virtual mirror, and then an asynchronous condition...

As animated characters increasingly become vital parts of virtual environments, then the engines that drive these characters increasingly become vital parts of virtual environment software. This paper gives an overview of the state of the art in character engines, and proposes a taxonomy of the features that are commonly found in them. This taxonom...

This poster presents an efficient Animation Planning Mediator (APM) designed to animate virtual characters in real time for crowd simulation. The APM selects the most appropriate animation clip available for each character and modifies the skeletal configuration to satisfy constraints given by the virtual environment and crowd simulation (CS) modul...

This paper reviews experimental methods for the study of the responses of people to violence in digital media, and in particular considers the issues of internal validity and ecological validity or generalisability of results to events in the real world. Experimental methods typically involve a significant level of abstraction from reality, with pa...

Real-time global illumination in VR systems enhances scene realism by incorporating soft shadows, reflections of objects in the scene, and color bleeding. The Virtual Light Field (VLF) method enables real-time global illumination rendering in VR. The VLF has been integrated with the Extreme VR system for real-time GPU-based rendering in a Cave Auto...

This paper compares two colour calibration techniques for digital photography. The first one is based on the white balancing, incorporated in the digital cameras plus brightness adjustment. The second one uses a colour checker card and a utility from the RADIANCE simulation system. Results and conclusions are given at the end of the paper.

This paper describes the makings of an experiment to test various hypotheses relating to how and under what conditions people would respond to a virtual fire occurring within a social setting. An analogy is drawn with making a movie, and all the steps involved, from the specification of the hypotheses through to a full analysis of one participan...

In this paper we describe a virtual clothing system for retail and design, created for Bodymetrics Ltd., at their request. In the retail setup we installed the system at Selfridges, a well known department store in London. To our knowledge this is a world first installation of a fully automatic virtual try-on system. Sizing and body landmark inf...

This paper presents a computer system for garment designers to realistically augment photographs of a person with virtual garment designs. We show that the accumulation of existing garment modelling and computer graphics techniques can be used to produce realistic images of clothes in the context of a real scene. Effects of natural light interactio...

This paper describes a technique for cloth-body collision detection applicable to simulation of apparel on walking humans. It is based on image-space interference tests but employs a new approach with layers of depth maps to resolve the problem arising from overlapping body parts. The modern workstations' graphics hardware is used to generate the d...

We present techniques for automatically creating and animating models obtained from human whole body scanned data. A layered model is developed in which the underlying skeleton, simplified surface and mapping of the surface to the skeletal structure are generated without manual intervention. External body landmarks such as those employed in anthrop...

This paper describes a fast technique for animating clothing on walking humans. It exploits a mass-spring cloth model but applies a new velocity directional modification approach to overcome its super-elasticity. The algorithm for cloth-body collision detection and response is based on image-space interference tests, unlike the existing ones that u...

This paper describes a fast technique for dressing virtual humans with different pieces of clothing. It exploits a mass-spring cloth model but applies a new velocity modification approach to overcome its super-elasticity. The algorithm for cloth-body collision detection and response is based on image-space interference tests, unlike most of the exi...