New role
Associate Professor in Nantes
Joining IMT Atlantique’s DAPI department and the PACCE team at LS2N in August 2026.
Étienne Peillard · Associate Professor
I study how augmented and virtual environments reshape the way people perceive, embody and act—and how immersive interfaces can help humans cooperate with autonomous systems.

Since August 1, 2026, I have been an Associate Professor in the Department of Automatic Control, Production Engineering and Computer Science (DAPI) at IMT Atlantique, on the Nantes campus. I am a member of the PACCE team at the LS2N (UMR CNRS 6004).
Alongside this primary affiliation, I am an associate member of the CNRS International Research Laboratory CROSSING, the French–Australian laboratory for Human / Autonomous Agents Teaming, and facilitate its Interaction working group. CROSSING provides the research framework for my joint PhD supervision and collaborations in Australia.
From September 1, 2021 to July 31, 2026, I was based on IMT Atlantique’s Brest campus, in the Computer Science department, where I was a member of the INUIT team at Lab-STICC (UMR CNRS 6285).
My research focuses on perception and embodied interaction in Virtual and Augmented Reality. It explores how augmented representations alter spatial perception, body perception, and affordances, as well as how immersive interfaces can support cooperation between humans and autonomous or intelligent systems. I lead the ANR JCJC PAEIAR project and contribute to several national and international projects involving partners in Australia and Japan.
In nov. 2020, I defended my PhD thesis, entitled “Toward a Characterization of Perceptual Biases in Mixed Reality: A Study of Factors Inducing Distance Misperception”, conducted in cooperation between Centrale Nantes, the Inria Hybrid team as well as the AAU Crenau, and supervised by Guillaume Moreau, Ferran Argelaguet and Jean-Marie Normand.
Before this, I obtained an engineering degree at Centrale Nantes in 2017.
I am currently preparing my habilitation to direct research (HDR), with a defense planned for late 2026 or early 2027.
PhD in Virtual and Augmented Reality, 2020
Inria Rennes - Hybrid / UMR AAU Crenau – Centrale Nantes
'Diplôme d’Ingénieur' (equivalent to MSc), 2017
Centrale Nantes
A quick view of what is happening now.
New role
Joining IMT Atlantique’s DAPI department and the PACCE team at LS2N in August 2026.
Funded research
Leading a 42-month project on augmented affordances and gesture guidance in hybrid environments.
Discover the projectNext milestone
Preparing an HDR on perception and embodied interaction, with a defense planned for late 2026 or early 2027.
Research infrastructure · IMT Atlantique

CEXI-HA brings together immersive systems, motion capture, eye tracking, physiological sensing, and experimental-method support to study interactions between people and emerging technologies.
From protocol to demonstrator Experimental design, controlled studies, prototyping, and evaluation.Three complementary directions across perception, embodiment and human–system cooperation.

ANR JCJC · Project lead
Understanding how AR changes what physical objects invite us to do—and designing visual cues that can guide gestures naturally.
Explore PAEIAR
Embodiment · Social XR
Studying how identification with augmented faces affects self-perception, attitudes and behaviour.
Explore the research
Human–system cooperation
Using AR and tangible interaction to make emergent autonomous behaviour legible and actionable.
Explore ARTUISISA small selection of work spanning spatial perception, embodied interaction and augmented reality.
Latest articles, conference papers and preprints.