Joint and Individual Walking in an Immersive Collaborative Virtual Environment

The aim of this experiment was to determine to which extent humans optimize their walking behavior in different conditions while navigating in a virtual maze. In two conditions participants either walked individually or jointly connected - carrying a physical stretcher. The results showed that an extra effort due to the task-required cooperation was split evenly within the group, even though the sensory feedback about the physical and social environment was significantly different for leader (e.g. was not able to see the follower) and follower (e.g. was able to see the leader). These results might indicate the emergence of a joint body: a phenomenon in which two individual action-perception loops are tuned towards each other in order to optimize a common goal.