Scene-Based Analysis for the Perception/Control of Locomotion

University Of California-Riverside, Riverside CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project will examine the visual information used by people to perceive and control their locomotion through the environment. The research will evaluate a model in which two different types of visual information are used in locomotion. One type of information is based on specific aspects of motion perception that involve the activation of neural mechanisms responsible for detecting expansion or looming. The second type of information is based on changes in scene position available in static views of the world and uses scene layout information based on landmarks. The experiments will examine a number of issues, including the importance of ordinal depth information in the scene, the information provided by scene landmarks, the temporal characteristics of how the brain encodes information for locomotion, and how the two types of information are integrated by the visual system for the control of locomotion. The results of these experiments will increase our understanding of the visual information used by the human brain to control navigation through the environment. In addition, these results will be of use in the development of robotic vision systems that navigate through the environment.