Walking in Virtual Reality - How the Attendance of an Avatar and the Feeling of Embodiment Influence Human Gait

Virtual Reality (VR) has become an exciting area for exploring human walking behavior in situations that are often difficult, impractical, or impossible to replicate in real life. This paper examines whether the presence and size of an avatar affect walking patterns. Participants completed walking trials under four different conditions (no avatar, normal-sized avatar, enlarged avatar, and downsized avatar) in a virtual version of a real room, while biomechanical data were collected to animate the avatar. The findings support previous research, showing that people display different walking patterns in VR. The analysis indicated a significant adjustment in key gait parameters, like stride length, based on the avatar's size. However, there were no notable differences between the conditions with and without an avatar, implying that the avatar's presence may not be strongly perceived. Future research should focus on improving avatar perception to gain a deeper understanding of how virtual self-representations can influence human gait and realize their full potential.