A Visual Equalization Strategy for Locomotor Control: Of Honeybees, Robots, and Humans

Abstract

Honeybees fly down the center of a corridor by equating the speed of optic flow in the lateral field of the two eyes. This flow-equalization strategy has been successfully implemented in mobile robots to guide behavior in cluttered environments. We investigated whether humans use a similar strategy to steer down a corridor and determined the relative contributions of equating the speed of flow (.27), the splay angles of base lines (.62), and the visual angles of texture on the left and right walls (.03) to steering behavior. A generalized equalization strategy based on the weighted linear combination of these variables closely models human behavior, providing robust visual control.

Strategies used to walk through a moving aperture

“…Getting to the middle portion of the doorframe increased one's chance of being successful. Similar to steering towards the middle of a static aperture [13,14], the participants in the current study also steered towards an area that afforded the greatest success.…”

Visual search for a motion singleton among coherently moving distractors

“…Thus, circuitry within the visual system seems to be tuned to register coherent motion as well as deviations within the coherent motion signals (cf. Braddick, 1993;Duchon & Warren, 2002;Egelhaaf et al, 2002).…”

Simultaneous measurement of steering performance and perceived heading on a curving path

“…A steering strategy based on the splay values and splay rates of the edge markers will be referred to as the splay rate strategy. For other work on splay and splay rate in steering, see Chatziastros, Wallis, and Bülthoff [1999], Duchon and Warren [2002], Riemersma [1981], and Mulder, Mulder, and Stassen [2003].…”