ASTRAL

Augmented Self: TowaRds effective Avatars in augmented reaLity

Abstract

Avatars can improve presence and performance in immersive environments and can alter users’ self-perception and behavior. Yet they remain less common in Augmented Reality (AR), where users can often see their physical body directly. ASTRAL investigates how to create compelling AR avatars and how those avatars affect users.

The project is organized around three complementary scientific axes:

1. Technology — synthesizing and displaying avatars in both video see-through and optical see-through AR systems.
2. Interaction — enabling users to act through an avatar while accounting for differences between the physical and virtual body and environment.
3. Perception — studying embodiment, self-perception, self-confidence, performance, and the psychological and social effects of AR avatars.

Potential applications range from physical rehabilitation to sports-performance enhancement. The project combines Augmented Reality, computer vision, 3D interaction, avatar synthesis, embodied interaction, and perceptual evaluation.

People involved

Project coordinator

Lionel Dominjon, Clarté

Researchers at IMT Atlantique

Etienne Peillard

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).

Guillaume Moreau

Professor of Computer Science at IMT Atlantique, Brest campus, in France, with research interests in Virtual and Augmented Reality within the Lab-STICC lab. He is also a member of the INRIA Hybrid team and currently serve as Deputy Dean for Research and Innovation at IMT Atlantique.

Aymeric Henard

Aymeric Henard is a research engineer at IMT Atlantique working on the ANR ASTRAL project. He completed his PhD in 2024 on Augmented Reality and tangible interaction for supervising and interacting with robot swarms, and now develops and evaluates real-time body-modification and avatar-embodiment techniques in Augmented Reality.

PhD student

Juri Yoneyama’s doctoral work (October 2024–September 2027) studies perception and interaction with real and virtual hands and objects in AR, including aimed motions, grasping anticipatory behavior, and transfer effects between physical and augmented interaction.

Consortium

ASTRAL is a multidisciplinary consortium coordinated by Clarté, with IMT Atlantique / Lab-STICC, Centrale Nantes / LS2N PACCE, and Inria Rennes / Hybrid. The partners bring complementary expertise in AR, computer vision, 3D interaction, avatar synthesis, embodiment, and immersive-system evaluation.

Publications

Juri Yoneyama also contributed to A. Cheymol et al., “Measuring the Impact of Objects’ Physicalization, Avatar Appearance, and their Consistency on Pick-and-Place Performance in Augmented Reality,” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 31(5), 2268–2276, 2025.

Funding

ASTRAL is funded by the French National Research Agency under reference ANR-23-CE33-0004. The project started in February 2024, runs for 42 months, and received an ANR grant of €613,639.