Developing Avatar Transformation Methodologies in Extended Reality

The Inria Centre at the University of Rennes is one of Inria’s nine centres and is home to more than thirty research teams. It is a major and well-recognized player in the field of digital science. The centre is at the heart of a rich ecosystem of R&D and innovation, involving highly innovative SMEs, large industrial groups, competitiveness clusters, research and higher education institutions, excellence laboratories, and a technological research institute.

Over recent years, a growing attention has been observed towards the various benefits that users can be obtain by embodying a virtual body different from their own in VR (dissimilar avatars [1]). For example, the capacity to interact in VR can be eased by elongating user’s virtual arm [2], patients’ pain can be reduced by altering a wound’s appearance [3], users can experience supernatural interactions by embodying an animal body [4], and changes in the avatar can alter the user’s behavioural responses [5]. However, in realistic and complex scenarios, the tasks, contexts and goals are constantly changing. Hence, it is not only important to design different avatars corresponding to these needs, but also to think about how to enable the avatar appearance to dynamically adapt to the modulation of these needs while enabling efficient interaction. However, to this day, this question has received limited attention, which leaves XR designers without practical solution to benefits from the diversity of dissimilar avatars applications, and remains even more challenging on cross-reality applications in which the user can transition between VR and AR scenarios.

The primary goal of this internship is to investigate strategies for designing avatar transformations in cross-reality environments following a human-centred design methodology. Specifically, we aim to assess how different approaches influence two key aspects of the user experience: (a) usability, i.e., the ease with which users interact with virtual content via their avatar, and (b) the sense of embodiment, i.e., the psychological experience of embodying the avatar [6]. Several design factors will be considered, including the input device, avatar visual representation [4], control laws (mapping user actions to avatar actions) [2], and interaction metaphors [7], considering both perception and motor research. Beyond formalizing and prototyping novel interaction methods, the research will experimentally evaluate the most promising methods to assess their impact on users' performance and sense of embodiment. If the results are conclusive, the intern will also have the possibility to write a research paper with the support of the supervisors. 

The internship is open for a duration of 6 months, with a potential opening towards a PhD depending on funding opportunities. The candidate will be provided with all the required equipment to conduct the research (i.e., VR/AR hardware).

[1] A. Cheymol, R. Fribourg, A. Lécuyer, J.-M. Normand, et F. Argelaguet, Beyond my Real Body: Characterization, Impacts, Applications and Perspectives of “Dissimilar” Avatars in Virtual Reality, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, p. 12, 2023.

[2] I. Poupyrev, M. Billinghurst, S. Weghorst, et T. Ichikawa, The go-go interaction technique: non-linear mapping for direct manipulation in VR, ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, 1996, p. 79‑80.

[3] M. Matamala-Gomez, A. M. Diaz Gonzalez, M. Slater, et M. V. Sanchez-Vives, Decreasing Pain Ratings in Chronic Arm Pain Through Changing a Virtual Body: Different Strategies for Different Pain Types, Journal of Pain, vol. 20, no 6, p. 685‑697, 2019. 

[4] A. Krekhov, S. Cmentowski, K. Emmerich, et J. Krüger, Beyond Human: Animals as an Escape from Stereotype Avatars in Virtual Reality Games », in Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, Barcelona Spain: ACM, oct. 2019, p. 439‑451.

[5] A. Cheymol, J. Wallace, J. Yoneyama, R. Fribourg, J.M. Normand & F. Argelaguet. Measuring the Impact of Objects' Physicalization, Avatar Appearance, and their Consistency on Pick-and-Place Performance in AR. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. 2025.

[6] K. Kilteni, R. Groten, et M. Slater, The Sense of Embodiment in Virtual Reality, Presence Teleoperators Virtual Environ., vol. 21, no 4, p. 373‑387, 2012.

[7] J.J. LaViola, E. Kruijff, R. McMahan, D. Bowman, D., I. Poupyrev. 3D user interfaces: theory and practice. Addison-Wesley Professional. 2017.

The candidate should be comfortable with as much following items as possible:

• Experience in the development of 3D/VR applications (e.g., Unity3D, Unreal Engine).
• Knowledge or human-computer interaction.
• Good spoken and written English.
• Good communication skills.

• Subsidized meals
• Social, cultural and sports events and activities