Research and Publications

With this rise in demand for Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs), so is the need to create Embodied Shared Virtual Environments (ESVE) where users may experience authentic social interactions. Tara’s research presents an exploratory examination of Embodiment - meaning the subjective feeling of owning a virtual representation in VR, and specifically Consistency in Embodiment - relating to how we prioritize and synchronise objective attributes of embodiment (i.e avatar representation) in order to create ESVEs which supports more intuitive social interaction. The goal is to understand how different technical setups could have a psychological impact on participants' experiences in ESVE. This research hopes to inform the development of successful social interaction in a variety of applications in VR, ranging from training to gaming.

Technically, she specialises in interactive Virtual Environments and character animation (facial expression, body movements, motion capture, keyframe animation) with modeling and VR software such as Maya, 3DS Max, Unity, and Opti-Track. The majority of her work was conducted in immersive Virtual Reality (the CAVE-like system at UCL, and HMDs, for instance, the Quest), where users not only see everything in 3D but also have their head-tracked.

For more publications please see her Google Scholar profile.