Metaverse Public Lab -1.0

Metaverse has a high level sociability. In this study, we consider the metaverse as a society and propose Metaverse Public Lab as a space to investigate it. Different from ordinary experimental spaces, Metaverse Public Lab exists in the users' living space and aims to be an environment where data is collected naturally while users play the metaverse. As the first step of Metaverse Public Lab, we constructed a space to measure users' sense of embodiment (the sense that arises when a body's properties are felt in the same way as those of the innate body) toward an avatar. This is because avatars are essential for social interaction, and heavy users inevitably use avatars for long periods of time, so the results are expected to be different from those in normal laboratory experiments. This space is implemented on the metaverse, so that anyone can conduct experiments without coming to a physical laboratory. Many heavy users live in the metaverse, which could contribute to the collection of a lot of specific data and to the automation of experiments.