Augmented affordances and embodied interaction

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

ANR JCJC project at IMT Atlantique / LS2N, studying how augmented reality changes the action possibilities people perceive in their physical surroundings.

At a glance

Augmented Reality (AR) does more than place digital content beside the physical world: it can change what an object appears to allow us to do. A solid object may seem warmer, softer, easier to grasp, or newly actionable when virtual cues alter its appearance, location, or response to movement. PAEIAR studies these mixed affordances—action possibilities that emerge from the combination of physical and digital information.

The project asks how visual and spatial AR cues reshape perception before, during, and after action. Its goal is to provide empirical foundations and design principles for AR interfaces that guide gestures clearly, subtly, and coherently.

01 The project A three-axis research programme on perception, interaction, and gesture guidance. 02 Yutaro’s contribution Doctoral experiments on how the appearance and physicality of AR objects modulate affordances.

Research programme

PAEIAR brings together experimental psychology, human–computer interaction, and AR engineering. Rather than treating augmentation as a neutral layer, the project treats it as a perceptual intervention: each visual change can influence object interpretation, motor preparation, and the gesture that follows.

PAEIAR connects perceptual characterisation, interaction techniques, and visual gesture guidance through a shared perception–action loop.

WP1

Characterising perceptual change

Measure how visual AR transformations affect the properties people attribute to physical and virtual objects, and the actions they expect those objects to support.

WP2

Understanding interaction-driven effects

Examine how direct manipulation, tangible interaction, and indirect control reshape affordances through the action itself.

WP3

Designing gesture guidance

Develop and evaluate visual strategies that steer movement through perceived affordances rather than explicit instruction.

Together, these work packages trace a full perception–action loop: from how an augmented object is interpreted, through the interaction it invites, to the gesture it can help guide in a real-world task.

Expected outcomes

The project will deliver experimental protocols, behavioural datasets, models of mixed affordances, and practical guidelines for designing perceptually grounded AR experiences. These outcomes are intended to support both fundamental research on embodied perception and the design of intelligible mixed-reality systems.

Yutaro’s doctoral research

PhD research · core contribution to PAEIAR

The PAEIAR programme provides the wider scientific framework. Within it, Yutaro Tanaka investigates a focused question: how do the visible material and physical properties of augmented objects change the actions people believe they can perform? His doctoral work makes the project’s central idea experimentally concrete by varying what an object looks and feels like in AR, then measuring changes in perceived affordances and interaction.

Featured publication

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics · 2026

A first study tests how an object’s physicality and thermal appearance in AR influence the actions users perceive it to afford.

Yutaro Tanaka, Juri Yoneyama, Nathalie Le Bigot, Guillaume Moreau, Gilles Coppin, Etienne Peillard (2026). Modulating Perceived Affordances in Augmented Reality Through Object Physicality and Thermal Appearance. IEEE TVCG.

PDF Project

Project team

PAEIAR connects expertise in embodied interaction, experimental psychology, and the perceptual evaluation of Augmented Reality. Étienne Peillard leads the project; Yutaro Tanaka’s doctoral research is its main experimental thread.

Project leader · embodied interaction

Étienne Peillard

Étienne leads PAEIAR and its research on how augmented representations reshape perception, action, and the affordances of objects in mixed environments.

Core doctoral research · PAEIAR

Yutaro Tanaka

Yutaro’s doctoral research makes the project’s central question testable: how visual AR cues change the properties people attribute to objects and the actions they expect those objects to support.

studies how physicality and thermal appearance shape perceived affordances;
measures how visual object properties influence action preparation and interaction; and
develops evidence for perceptually grounded gesture guidance in AR.

Doctoral co-supervision

Perception and human factors · doctoral co-supervision

Gilles Coppin

Contributes expertise in human–computer interaction, affective perception, and experimental methods for studying how people interpret and act on augmented objects.

Cognitive psychology · doctoral co-supervision

Nathalie Le Bigot

Contributes expertise in perception–action interactions and cognitive evaluation, grounding the doctoral experiments in cognitive psychology.

Funding

French National Research Agency · AAPG 2025 · JCJC schemePAEIAR is funded for 42 months by the French National Research Agency (ANR).

Embodied Interaction | Étienne Peillard