Embodiment of users within robotic systems has been explored in human-robot interaction, most often in telepresence and teleoperation. In these applications, synchronized visuomotor feedback can evoke a sense of body ownership and agency, contributing to the experience of embodiment. We extend this work by employing embreathment, the representation of the user's own breath in real time, as a means for enhancing user embodiment experience in robots. In a within-subjects experiment, participants controlled a robotic arm, while its movements were either synchronized or non-synchronized with their own breath. Synchrony was shown to significantly increase body ownership, and was preferred by most participants. We propose the representation of physiological signals as a novel interoceptive pathway for human-robot interaction, and discuss implications for telepresence, prosthetics, collaboration with robots, and shared autonomy.
@article{arxiv.2512.14952,
title = {Breathe with Me: Synchronizing Biosignals for User Embodiment in Robots},
author = {Iddo Yehoshua Wald and Amber Maimon and Shiyao Zhang and Dennis Küster and Robert Porzel and Tanja Schultz and Rainer Malaka},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.14952},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Accepted to appear in the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '26), Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Iddo Yehoshua Wald and Amber Maimon contributed equally