The role of the Sense of Embodiment (SoE) in teleoperation is becoming prominent. The SoE affects both the operator's experience and the task performance. In this study we investigate how the individual level of kinaesthetic intelligence affects the SoE during an embodiment illusion experience (EIE). We identify the experimental group in dancers and gymnasts who practice at a competitive level. We hypothesise that individuals with high kinaesthetic intelligence are more resilient to the EIE, due to their awareness of the joints position in the space. Moreover, we designed an active EIE to better assess the sense of agency and self-location. Usually, EIEs propose static tasks which are appropriate to assess the sense of ownership, but cannot clearly assess the other two components of the SoE. Finally, for the first time, to the knowledge of the authors, the variation of the pupil dilation was used as psycho-physiological measure of the SoE.

We explore pupil diameter (PD) as estimator of Sense of Embodiment (SoE) using data of three user studies. We hypothesize that pupil diameter reflects SoE in a direct and indirect way. If individuals feel strongly embodied, presenting an emotional stimulus like a threat to the surrogate will produce a strong response, as if the stimulus would be presented to their own body. This would lead to a positive correlation between SoE and pupil dilation during the presentation of emotional stimuli. Besides this direct effect, there may also be an indirect effect. It is postulated that higher degrees of embodiment reduce workload when controlling a surrogate. This indirect effect of embodiment through lower workload on the PD would result in a negative correlation between SoE and PD since lower workload results in smaller PD. These direct and indirect effects were partially confirmed by the results of three experiments. We observed that PD and SoE are positive and direct correlated in case of emotional stimuli subjected to the surrogate (e.g. a threat), and that PD tended to be smaller for participants who experienced a condition designed to provide high SoE compared to one designed to provide low SoE.