Elastic Legs Illusion

Elastic Legs Illusion (ELI) provides the striking illusory experience of having a longer legs where the virtual legs are visually stretched from the first-person perspective. This illusion works without any experimenter's assist; a single subject wearing a HMD sits on a floor with both legs stretched straight out against a wooden-plate and pulls backward a handle connected with rubber-material tube, that is anchored at the plate. A weight scale (Wii Balance Board) is placed sandwiched between the both legs and the plate where the more strongly the subject pulls the handle the more load is transferred to both legs as well as to the weight scale. ELI correlates this increment of the weight scale with the stretch ratio of the legs in HMD space. Thus, the sense of legs being pushed back against the plate is transformed into a sense of having longer legs. The system was tested in our laboratory exhibition, showing 33 out of 44 participants agreed with having longer legs strongly.