Michiteru Kitazaki

Toyohashi University of Technology · Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Virtual walking systems for stationary observers have been developed using multimodal stimulation such as vision, touch, and sound to overcome physical limitation. In previous studies, participants were typically positioned in either a standing or a seated position. It would be beneficial if bedridden users could have enough virtual walking experie...

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3613904.3642340

Human locomotion is most naturally achieved through walking, which is good for both mental and physical health. To provide a virtual walking experience to seated users, a system utilizing foot vibrations and simulated optical flow was developed. The current study sought to augment this system and examine the effect of an avatar's cast shadow and fo...

Introduction: Incorporating an additional limb that synchronizes with multiple body parts enables the user to achieve high task accuracy and smooth movement. In this case, the visual appearance of the wearable robotic limb contributes to the sense of embodiment. Additionally, the user’s motor function changes as a result of this embodiment. However...

Visuomotor synchrony in time and space induces a sense of embodiment towards virtual bodies experienced in first-person view using Virtual Reality (VR). Here, we investigated whether temporal visuomotor synchrony affects avatar embodiment even when the movements of the virtual arms are spatially altered from those of the user in a non-human-like ma...

Humans feel empathic embarrassment by witnessing others go through embarrassing situations. We examined whether we feel such empathic embarrassment even with robot avatars. Participants observed a human avatar and a robot avatar face a series of embarrassing and non-embarrassing scenarios. We collected data for their empathic embarrassment and the...

I was inevitably drawn to the field of illusion research, due to the captivating nature of illusions in my undergraduate period. Throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies, I engaged in research aimed at uncovering a facet of the mechanism of vision. One of the central focuses of my current research is the examination of human perception thro...

When humans generate stimuli voluntarily, they perceive the stimuli more weakly than those produced by others, which is called sensory attenuation (SA). SA has been investigated in various body parts, but it is unclear whether an extended body induces SA. This study investigated the SA of audio stimuli generated by an extended body. SA was assessed...

Even if we cannot control them, or when we receive no tactile or proprioceptive feedback from them, limbs attached to our bodies can still provide indirect proprioceptive and haptic stimulations to the body parts they are attached to simply due to the physical connections. In this study we investigated whether such indirect movement and haptic feed...

Virtual co-embodiment enables sharing avatars with others in virtual environments and can be applied for training motor skills by allowing teachers to share movements with learners in first-person perspective. We conducted a task where participants were asked to imitate pre-recorded hand movements of a teacher as accurately as possible. The partici...

To interact with machines, from computers to cars, we need to monitor multiple sensory stimuli, and respond to them with specific motor actions. It has been shown that our ability to react to a sensory stimulus is dependent on both the stimulus modality, as well as the spatial compatibility of the stimulus and the required response. However, the co...

We explored a concept called “virtual co-embodiment”, which enables users to share their virtual avatars with others. Co-embodiment of avatars and robots can be applied for collaboratively performing complicated tasks, skill training, rehabilitation, and aiding disabled users. We conducted an experiment where two users could co-embody one “joint av...

The supernumerary robotic limb system expands the motor function of human users by adding extra artificially designed limbs. It is important for us to embody the system as if it is a part of one’s own body and to maintain cognitive transparency in which the cognitive load is suppressed. Embodiment studies have been conducted with an expansion of bo...

Human behavior and perception are optimized for a single body. Yet, the human brain has plasticity, which allows us to extend our body schema. By utilizing technology like robotics or virtual reality (VR), we can modify our body parts or even add a new body to our own while retaining control over these parts. However, the update of body cognition w...

We investigated whether sharing a common goal with a partner and knowing the partner’s intention behind arm movements affect the senses of agency and ownership towards an arm fully controlled by the partner. Participant dyads controlled different limbs (left and right arms) of the same virtual avatar immersed in a virtual environment in first perso...

We propose a concept called “JIZAI Body” that allows each person to live the way they wish to live in society. One who acquires a JIZAI Body can (simultaneously) control (or delegate control) of their natural body and extensions of it, both in physical and cyberspace. We begin by describing the JIZAI Body and the associated JIZAI state in more deta...

The supernumerary robotic limb system expands the motor function of human users by adding extra artificially designed limbs. It is important for us to embody the system as if it is a part of one’s own body and to maintain cognitive transparency in which the cognitive load is suppressed. Embodiment studies have been conducted with an expansion of bo...

The supernumerary robotic limb system expands the motor function of human users by adding extra artificially designed limbs. It is important for us to embody the system as if it is a part of one’s own body and to maintain cognitive transparency in which the cognitive load is suppressed. Embodiment studies have been conducted with an expansion of bo...

This paper proposes the method of muscle tracking control using a force sensor. A lot of people have stiff shoulder or lower back pain. A massage robot is studied to eliminate this problem. A force sensor based on a finger pad of massage robot gets moment, shearing, and reaction force data. the tracking control using force control is proposed to es...

Visual perspective taking is inferring how the world looks to another person. To clarify this process, we investigated whether employing a humanoid avatar as the viewpoint would facilitate an imagined perspective shift in a virtual environment, and which factor of the avatar is effective for the facilitation effect. We used a task that involved rep...

Walking is a human need. Even when physical disabilities or social situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, prevent people from walking, virtual reality can provide an opportunity for virtual walking or travel. In this study, a virtual walking system was developed in which users view omnidirectional movies while receiving scene-congruent vibratio...

In virtual reality (VR), a virtual mirror is often used to display the VR avatar to the user for enhancing the embodiment. The reflected image of the synchronization of the virtual body with the user’s movement is expected to be recognized as the user’s own reflection. In addition to the visuo-motor synchrony, there are some mirror reflection facto...

Visual processing of the body movements of other animals is important for adaptive animal behaviors. It is widely known that animals can distinguish articulated animal movements even when they are just represented by points of light such that only information about biological motion is retained. However, the extent to which nonhuman great apes comp...

In this study, a novel motion display device, having 10 DOF (degrees of freedom) for virtual walking is developed. The device consists of a motion seat and a foot module. The device creates synchronous motions of the whole body and lower legs, imparting the straight and turn walking sensations. The motion seat has four-DOF motions of lifting, rolli...

Peripersonal space (PPS) is important for humans to perform body–environment interactions. However, many previous studies only focused on the specific direction of the PPS, such as the front space, despite suggesting that there were PPSs in all directions. We aimed to measure and compare the peri-trunk PPS in four directions (front, rear, left, and...

Walking is a fundamental physical activity in humans. Various virtual walking systems have been developed using treadmill or leg-support devices. Using optic flow, foot vibrations simulating footsteps, and a walking avatar, we propose a virtual walking system that does not require limb action for seated users. We aim to investigate whether a full-b...

Pseudo physical contact is used for communication in virtual environments such as VRChat. We hypothesized that the pseudo physical contact could affect interpersonal impression and communication, and the interpersonal impression would be modulated by appearance of body or avatar type. To test these hypotheses, we performed a questionnaire survey fo...

Understanding another’s viewpoint is the ability to infer others’ minds, which is important for successful social communication. To clarify this process, we investigated whether employing a humanoid avatar as the viewpoint would facilitate an imagined perspective shift in a virtual environment. We used a task that involved reporting how an object l...

Visual perspective taking is inferring how the world looks to another person. To clarify this process, we investigated whether employing a humanoid avatar as the viewpoint would facilitate an imagined perspective shift in a virtual environment. We used a task that involved reporting how an object looks by a simple direction judgment either from the...

Cyber space enables us to “share” bodies whose movements are a consequence of movements by several individuals. But whether and how our motor behavior is affected during body sharing remains unclear. Here we examined this issue in arm reaching performed by a shared avatar, whose movement was generated by averaging the movements of two participants....

We developed a full-body virtual-presence system in which users crawl to travel within the human body, and gain insight into the structures of digestive organs through visual, tactile, and auditory sensations. Digestive organs (esophagus, stomach, duodenum, small intestine, large intestine, rectum) are created in detail with 3-D images that users c...

Illusory body ownership can be induced in a body part or a full body by visual-motor synchronisation. A previous study indicated that an invisible full body illusion can be induced by the synchronous movement of only the hands and feet. The difference between body part ownership and the full body illusion has not been explained in detail because th...

Illusory ownership can be induced in a virtual body by visuo-motor synchrony. Our aim was to test the possibility of a re-association of the right thumb with a virtual left arm and express the illusory body ownership of the re-associated arm through a synchronous or asynchronous movement of the body parts through action and vision. Participants fel...

Detachable Body is a new concept of a robot arm wearable as an extended part of the body. It can be detached from the user's natural body; it can be attached not only to another person but also anywhere in the environment. Humans can eventually perform tasks that involve co-presence, or tasks that are concurrent and performed in two separate places...

Walking is an innate human behavior that propels the body forward. Recent studies have investigated the creation of a walking sensation wherein, the body neither moves nor is forced to move. However, it is unclear which whole-body motions effectively induce the sensation of walking. Here, we show that passive whole-body motions such as heave and/or...

This paper describes a new method to generate turning walking sensation by vestibular stimulation with initial (bias) inclination of the motion seat. Our vestibular display can move a seat in 3 degree-of-freedom: lifting, roll and pitch rotation. All of these motions are important for generating walking sensation. We investigated the intensity of t...

Reasoning about other people’s mind is important to successful social communication. Visual perspective taking is the basic ability to infer others’ mind, denoting the process of judgment what and how a certain object looks from the others’ viewpoint. Recent research showed that the understanding of how a target appears to another person occurs spo...

Studies of infants’ and adults’ social cognition frequently use geometric-shape agents such as coloured squares and circles, but the influence of agent visual-form on social cognition has been little investigated. Here, although adults gave accurate explicit descriptions of interactions between geometric-shape aggressors and victims, implicit assoc...

The limited space immediately surrounding our body, known as peripersonal space (PPS), has been investigated by focusing on changes in the multisensory processing of audio-tactile stimuli occurring within or outside the PPS. Some studies have reported that the PPS representation is extended by body actions such as walking. However, it is unclear wh...

This article reports the first psychological evidence that the combination of oscillating optic flow and synchronous foot vibration evokes a walking sensation. In this study, we first captured a walker’s first-person-view scenes with footstep timings. Participants observed the naturally oscillating scenes on a head-mounted display with vibrations o...

Although social contingency, namely contingent reactions of other to one's own actions, critically affects attachment formation, can it also modulate the perceived distance between self and other? Previous studies have suggested a positive answer. However, these studies are criticized for not showing true top-down effects on perception because of p...

The current study describes a method for rendering the sensation of walking using a vestibular display (a motion seat) with three degrees of freedom. The sensations evoked by the vestibular display and real walking were investigated using a psychophysical method. The optimal motion of the vestibular display to induce the sensation of walking on a l...

While rubbing a material, both shear force and vibration spatiotemporally occur on the skin of our finger pad. To reproduce various kind of rubbing sensation, we developed a tactile display using shaft end-effectors to spatiotemporally drive the skin of finger pad. Each shaft was connected to a DC motor and to a voice coil. When the shaft is rotate...

To capture a remote 3D image, conventional stereo cameras attached to a robot head have been commonly used. However, when the head and cameras rotate, the captured image in buffers is degraded by latency and motion blur, which may cause VR sickness. In the present study, we propose a method named TwinCam in which we use two 360° cameras spaced at t...

We have developed a multisensory virtual reality system, FiveStar VR (five senses theater for VR), that enables participants to relive or share other's behavior through well-designed simultaneous stimulation to multiple modalities. FiveStar VR consists of somatosensory displays in addition to the conventional audiovisual VR setup. In the FiveStar V...