Investigating Gait Imitation in VR: Impact of Visual Feedback and Avatar Design
Saad, A., Liebers, J., Koczian, C., Wittig, N., Heger, R., Strauss, M., Pfützenreuter, N., Goedicke, D., Gruenefeld, U., Schneegass, S. & Degraen, D.
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, 2025
Summary
Gait is a distinctive behavioral trait, yet its vulnerability against imitation remains underexplored in immersive environments. We present a study investigating how real-time visual feedback in virtual reality (VR) influences a person’s ability to mimic another’s gait. Through two experiments, we first identify the most usable feedback design (N = 8), then evaluate its impact on imitation performance compared to a baseline without feedback (N = 18). We analyze positional and rotational similarity between participants and target avatars, examining the influence of avatar–user gender matching and repeated practice. Our findings reveal that visual feedback significantly improves rotational alignment and that practice leads to measurable improvements in mimicry accuracy. We discuss implications for avatar embodiment, personalization in VR applications, and potential considerations for behavioral biometric systems. We also contribute a publicly available dataset of gait mimicry in VR, supporting further research on motion learning and imitation.
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Cite as
Saad, A., Liebers, J., Koczian, C., Wittig, N., Heger, R., Strauss, M., Pfützenreuter, N., Goedicke, D., Gruenefeld, U., Schneegass, S. & Degraen, D. (2025). Investigating Gait Imitation in VR: Impact of Visual Feedback and Avatar Design. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (pp. 301–309). https://doi.org/10.1145/3771882.3771912
