Exploring Sense of Agency and Ownership over Cybernetic Avatars: Practical Implications

Cybernetic avatars (CAs), robots or CG agents operated remotely by humans, are increasingly used for remote communication, offering potential for applications such as telework. However, the usability of these systems, particularly regarding the operator’s sense of agency (SoA) and sense of ownership (SoO), remains underexplored. We conducted an experiment using a commercially employed CA system. The results showed that operators can experience SoA and SoO over on-screen CG avatars, supporting the system’s basic usability. Additionally, the results suggest that limiting operator hand movements might better maintain SoA in environments with a delay in the reflection of operators’ movement on CAs. These findings have preliminary implications for CA system usage, highlighting the need to consider trade-offs between operation and system responsiveness.