Augmented Body Parts: Bridging VR Embodiment and Wearable Robotics
Exploring how insights from virtual embodiment can inform the design of wearable robotic augmentation
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CHI 2026 in Barcelona, Spain
We are looking for researchers interested in
embodied interaction, augmented bodies, and human body augmentation
to join this workshop.
We are looking for researchers interested in
embodied interaction, augmented bodies, and human body augmentation
to join this workshop.
We particularly welcome contributions from researchers interested in extending human bodily domains and capabilities through changes in bodily form. Through this workshop, we aim to collectively imagine possible future shapes of the human body and to brainstorm the research directions and design challenges necessary to realize such embodied extensions.
We will primarily engage with the following two themes, while also encouraging broader reflections and ideas that extend beyond them.
We welcome diverse perspectives that resonate with, challenge, or expand these thematic directions.
Theme 1: Embodiment and Adaptation with Virtually Augmented Body Parts
This theme examines how users perceive, learn, and control additional body parts within virtual environments. We explore how design choices in virtual augmentation shape experiences of embodiment and adaptation.
Key questions include:
How do different control mappings and sensory feedback modalities influence ownership and agency?
What onboarding or training strategies support adaptation without introducing cognitive overload?
What are the limits of human plasticity when body morphology deviates from the human template, and how might design mitigate these limits?
Theme 2: Bridging Virtual Embodiment to Wearable Robotics
This theme focuses on how insights gained from virtual embodiment research can be translated into practical guidance for wearable robotic systems. We aim to discuss how virtual studies can meaningfully inform real-world, on-body implementations.
Key questions include:
Which VR-derived strategies for embodiment and adaptation reliably transfer to physical systems?
What forms of evidence gathered in virtual environments best predict successful use of wearable robotics?
How should interaction artifacts (e.g., control mappings, feedback parameters, logs) be structured and shared to support reuse across systems?
Recent work across HCI/HRI and wearable robotics has investigated how people control and perceive extra body parts to augment the human body, in both virtual and physical settings. Virtual embodiment in XR has shown that users can experience ownership and agency with non-anthropomorphic avatars, while implementations with wearable robotics have introduced supernumerary limbs such as third arms and robotic tails. Despite these shared goals, the connections between the results remain limited because the studies are developed and validated under different assumptions and contexts, so the insights from VR do not consistently carry over to hardware. This workshop brings together researchers in XR, wearable robotics, haptics, and neuroHCI to explore that gap. We focus on two questions: how to foster embodiment and adaptation with augmented body parts, and how to bridge virtual embodiment in VR to effective use with wearable robotics. Through a keynote, brief in-group position shares, and two hands-on group activities, participants will explore the design space of control mappings and sensory-feedback strategies for a variety of extended body parts, and specify what can transfer and how those insights should be packaged for wearable robotics implementations. Ultimately, this workshop aims to articulate a focused research agenda that connects VR-based studies to concrete wearable robotics implementations, enabling future work on augmenting the human body with new parts and capabilities.
This workshop is supported by
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