Beyond avatars: Designing bodily interfaces in virtual environments
Image credit: BhamXR YouTubeAbstract
A BhamXR talk by Xiang Li from the University of Cambridge on designing bodily interfaces for virtual environments, including how gestures, muscle activity, movement and spatial awareness can support interaction in XR.
Xiang Li, a PhD candidate in the Intelligent Interactive Systems Group at the University of Cambridge, joined BhamXR to discuss Beyond avatars: Designing bodily interfaces in virtual environments.
The session explored how the body can function as a medium for control, coordination and expression in immersive technologies. Topics included gestures, muscle activity, movement and spatial awareness as foundations for interaction across virtual, augmented and mixed reality.
About the speaker
Xiang Li is a fourth-year PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge and a Student Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. His research focuses on embodied interaction and body-centric interfaces for spatial computing, with work published across HCI and XR venues.
The BhamXR recording was published on YouTube on 5 December 2025.
Links: Eventbrite listing and BhamXR LinkedIn.
About BhamXR
BhamXR is the University of Birmingham’s interdisciplinary XR network. The VR Lab is part of and actively supports the network through talks, visits, workshops, student activities, technical support and collaborative research.