Drifting perceptual patterns suggest prediction errors fusion rather than hypothesis selection: replicating the rubber-hand illusion on a robot

Understand

Humans can experience fake body parts as theirs just by simple visuo-tactile synchronous stimulation.

• This body-illusion is accompanied by a drift in the perception of the real limb towards the fake limb, suggesting an update of body estimation resulting from stimulation.
• This work compares body limb drifting patterns of human participants, in a rubber hand illusion experiment, with the end-effector estimation displacement of a multisensory robotic arm enabled with predictive processing perception.
• Results show similar drifting patterns in both human and robot experiments, and they also suggest that the perceptual drift is due to prediction error fusion, rather than hypothesis selection.