Grand Challenges around Designing Computers' Control Over Our Bodies
Abstract
Advances in emerging technologies, such as on-body mechanical actuators and electrical muscle stimulation, have allowed computers to take control over our bodies. This presents opportunities as well as challenges, raising fundamental questions about agency and the role of our bodies when interacting with technology. To advance this research field as a whole, we brought together expert perspectives in a week-long seminar to articulate the grand challenges that should be tackled when it comes to the design of computers' control over our bodies. These grand challenges span technical, design, user, and ethical aspects. By articulating these grand challenges, we aim to begin initiating a research agenda that positions bodily control not only as a technical feature but as a central, experiential, and ethical concern for future human-computer interaction endeavors.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2601.19143,
title = {Grand Challenges around Designing Computers' Control Over Our Bodies},
author = {Florian 'Floyd' Mueller and Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze and Misha Sra and Mar Gonzalez-Franco and Henning Pohl and Susanne Boll and Richard Byrne and Arthur Caetano and Masahiko Inami and Jarrod Knibbe and Per Ola Kristensson and Xiang Li and Zhuying Li and Joe Marshall and Louise Petersen Matjeka and Minna Nygren and Rakesh Patibanda and Sara Price and Harald Reiterer and Aryan Saini and Oliver Schneider and Ambika Shahu and Phoebe O. Toups Dugas and Don Samitha Elvitigala},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.19143},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
21 pages, 6 figures, accepted by ACM CHI 2026