Keywords

1 Introduction

Theme extensively explored by science fiction, especially on the 70 s, 80 s and 90 s, the body reconstruction in the form of mechanical and electronic implants, with emphasis in the fields of robotics, bionics and artificial intelligence, became movie and entered to people’s homes through the television media.

At that time, productions such as: Cyborg – The Six Million Dollar Man Footnote 1 (series, USA, ABC [1974–1978], color, 60 min, 05 seasons, 100 episodes), The Bionic Woman Footnote 2 (series, USA, ABC [1976–1977] / NBC [1977–1978], color, 48 min, 03 seasons, 58 episodes) and Robocop Footnote 3 (film, USA, MGM, 1987, color, 102 min), have become popular by suggesting hybrids of men with machines whose mechanical and electronic components, with their sophisticated ways to transpose the obsolescence of the biological body, visually distinguished the organic matter [1].

These boundaries, however, loses more and more clarity when we enter the field of genetic engineeringFootnote 4 and nanotechnologyFootnote 5, which makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish the bodies of the artificial intelligence entities of human bodies: as the film Artificial Intelligence Footnote 6 (film, USA, Warner Bros., 2001, color, 146 min) and the masterpiece Blade Runner Footnote 7 (film, USA, Warner Bros., 1982, color, 117 min), resulting by this process, new metaphors and body images.

This scenario also includes the molecular biology, psychology, cybernetics and digital technology. This last one, with its body tracking systemsFootnote 8, infrared termography imagingFootnote 9, brain mapping and thoughts commandFootnote 10 and three-dimensional graphic images increasingly realistic, allows the “scanning and virtualization of the body.” [1] These in turn potentializes the biological characteristics, making it possible for the human, not only transit but also live, feelFootnote 11 and transform the virtual world.

In this sense, with origins in the field of science fiction, the ‘post-humanism’ allows us to think about that moment of cinema and American literature and can be a term used to refer to a person or entity resulting from a hybridization process the biological body with cybernetic [1, 2].

Similarly, the Virtual Reality systems (VR) keeps continuity aspects between humans and machines, between the physical and the virtual, transcending the boundaries of a physical body, while incorporates new cultural prosthesis (such as Oculus Rift® and haptic glove) to the biological structure.

Resulting from this process, the user starts to perceive and interpret the world and the things, in a way never seen before in human history, in which the imagination takes shape, affects our relationship with the body and actively participates modifying both the virtual world as the physical world.

Paradoxically, it is in this context that the human and technological, natural and artificial, biological and cybernetic, fiction and nonfiction, walk intertwined, which allows us to rethink the concept of ‘human’ and even speak about a post-human condition. This, in turn, calls into question alleged dichotomies, such as: real vs. virtual, mind vs. body, objective vs. subjective, something vs. no-thing, by adopting an integrated perspective that is opposed above all to univocal trends, essentialist and metaphysical, as common to the anthropocentric-humanistic concepts and to the modern science [1, 2, 4].

2 The Representation of the Post-Human Condition Through the Biological-Artificial Continuum

By the relationships of the body with digital technologies is inaugurated a discursive panorama called ‘post-human’. In this, the emergence of the cyborg as a political / scientific project for the XXI Century [5] leads us to a new context marked by the resultant hybridism of man-machine relations, here represented by the ‘biological-artificial’ continuum: (Fig. 1)

Fig. 1.
figure 1

The ‘biological-artificial’ continuum (Source: the authors, adapted from google images)

Full size image

At one extreme we have the biological body which gradually becomes artificial, while incorporates technologies such as: VR devices, prostheses originated by 3D printers which replace damaged organs, bionic limbs and even medical applications involving nanotechnological components.

At the other extreme we have the virtual body, that even though artificial, is closely related to the physical body: the brain-computer interfaces in which the users toughts commands the avatar’sFootnote 12 actions; In turn, in VR systems, the users command the avatar from devices adjusted to their physical body.

At the same time, what is happening in the virtual environment with the avatar can be felt by the biological body in the physical environment, such as in situations where the user has tachycardia and sweating while simulates a ride on a roller coaster, or even when the users can touch and feel virtual objects through haptic devices.

That is, in some circumstances the body-machineFootnote 13 approaches the physical body by acquiring a prosthesis function. In other situations, the body-machine gradually begins to support the actions and interactions of a virtual bodyFootnote 14, represented by the avatars in the virtual environments.

Whereas these technologies are closely related to the ways we interact with the world, we can say that in VR systems, while we transit from one side to another, between the biological and the artificial, between the physical and virtual worlds, taking on new body configurations. These new forms, however, not only simulate human characteristics: they potentialize the biological body.

In this context, VR systems keep a peculiarity that characterizes and distinguishes it from other technologies: the coexistence of biological and virtual bodies that act coordinately so that the user can perform and interact in the virtual world.

Beyond that, in VR systems, the physical body, metaphorically incorporated to the virtual environment, is presented as information from which the user himself and the others can make a reading of the context to interpret the situation and make decisions.

This human transfiguration would be, in turn, the result of a physical body integration process with the body-machine, allowing the user move between the physical and virtual worlds and even perceive in the virtual environment and physically feel it.

In this perspective, we can say that the ‘biological-artificial’ continuum covers the ‘physical-virtual’ continuum which, in turn, closely related to the continuum ‘offline-online’, proposed by França [4].

3 The Body-Information in VR Systems

With interfaces increasingly developed to support human interaction, VR gradually integrated the virtual worlds to our bodies, metaphorized, immersed to the point that the users can manipulate and even feel the virtual objects.

In this perspective, the dematerialized body, becomes storable and retrievable through network connections, readable through the displays and screens and even printable in certain circumstancesFootnote 15.

However, despite all these changes, we still inhabiting our human bodies. As a result, while we present ourselves, we act and interact in the virtual environment, we refer everything we know of the physical world, all that is familiar to us, including our own body: to enter, exit, find, perceive the environment, look, focus attention, define a state, set the mood, communicate, share a point of view, model, create, gesture (body language), representing the many ways of being human [4, 7].

In such circumstances, we can see the interdependence between body, information and sign, considering that the body is the first human informational support and it is continuously formed from the exchanges carried out with the environment. From the perspective of contemporary culture, the information, as a sign, has an active role in the body’s mediations with any phenomenon in the world and this relationship is becoming more complex with the growing and intensive use of information technologies, which approximate even more men and machines [8].

In other words, VR employs multimedia, computer graphics, image processing and other resources to create synthetic environment in which the body acts both as support for the prosthesis (dressed user with VR devices) or as sign (immersed user, metaphorically, in virtual environment).

4 Ergonomic Aspects of VR Systems Applied to Trainning Situations

Often used for training high risk and complex procedures, VR allows the user to experience problem-situations in detail, in a synthetic computer-generated environment. Although artificial, the generated environment guards features and similarities with the physical world, so that allow the user to contextually undergo the experience that lead to the sensation of physical involvement [9].

In these systems, the simulated environments need to provide a level of realistic representation, which in turn is related to the degree of realism of the interface. Therefore, we seek to take advantage of the knowledge that people have about the physical world in their everyday life [10].

In training, the VR user is prepared to address problem situations, perform procedures and make decisions from simulations with a high degree of realism. To this end, the RV user is immersed in a three-dimensional computer-generated environment, which simulates the physical world through interactive devices that send and receive information.

During the training, the user takes as reference the body itself and everything that he/she knows about the physical world in order to act and interact in simulated virtual environment. In this context, the set of information available in the interface is crucial for the user to interpret and analyze the situation and make decisions.

With regard to the aspects of ergonomic nonconformity, in some cases these interfaces take the user to a greater cognitive effort. In others, hardware and devices, both can overload the user and restrict their actions due to physical constraints.

Attentive to these and other issues, ergonomics has significant contributions to the design, analysis and development of VR interfaces in order to promote a better integration of the product with the user and hence a better performance.

Thus, it is up to the ergonomist be aware about the characteristics, expectations, needs and desires of the users in order to provide them more enjoyable, engaging and challenging experiences.

5 Ergonomics and the User-Centered Design in VR Systems

An important theme in ergonomics is the design for humans which can be summarized as the principle of the user-centered design: if an object, system or environment is designed for human use, then its design should be based on the physical and mental characteristics of the user [11].

In order to consider people’s knowledge about the physical world [10] and in order to provide even more immersive and engaging experiences, RV system designers seek to offer interfaces and devices that approximate the users’ actions to their physical movements and sensations observed in their everyday lives, in order to provide an even more realistic experience.

In this context, however, many products are still designed with a focus on the technology, without taking into account the users’ characteristics and needs. Traditionally, projects focused on the function of the product can bring harm to people considering their efforts, the time taken to perform the task or even damage to the physical and mental health of users.

In such situations, the development of VR systems presents itself as a great challenge. Despite its importance and social impact, the design of these technologies requires multidisciplinary efforts to overcome the technological limitations without compromising the usability of devices and simulated environments.

In this scenario, the User-Centered Design paradigm then puts the user at the center of the design process in order to integrate the usability to the design and development of products and systems.

In turn, the usability study in VR systems allows researchers to understand how people feel when interacting with products and systems in order to explain the user experience in subjective terms [10].

Focusing on a better understanding of the users, it is indispensable to the ergonomist be aware about their characteristics, expectations, needs and desires in order to optimize the user’s interactions and to design more effective, efficient and easy-to-learn interfaces which, in turn, provide an even more enjoyable, engaging and challenging experience to them.

6 Discussion

Given the above, we consider that the posthuman condition happens not detached from our biological condition, since from birth, we inescapably inhabit our physical bodies.

Adopting the body as a reference and from their anatomical and physiological components (brain, sense organs, vocal tract, etc.) coordinate our actions, we manage our interactions and we position ourselves in the world. By extension, our presence is not limited to our physical existence, but it involves our positionings as beings in physical or virtual worlds.

Similar to fiction in some extent we would be living in a matrixFootnote 16 so that we do not realize ourselves without machines. Consequently, with the digitalization and virtualization of the bodies, calls into question the idea of finitude linked to the anatomy of the biological body.

In this context, the body goes to be built and modeled, so that the obsolescence of the natural body be considered from overcoming the physiological body limits: connecting our bodies to machines, our minds to technology, we become flesh, blood and pixels beings, immortalizing ourselves while simultaneously we inhabit the virtual world.