Control of visually guided braking using constant-[Formula: see text] and proportional rate.

This study investigated the optical information and control strategies used in visually guided braking. In such tasks, drivers exhibit two different braking behaviors: impulsive braking and continuously regulated braking. We designed two experiments involving a simulated braking task to investigate these two behaviors.

Breaking camouflage and detecting targets require optic flow and image structure information.

Use of motion to break camouflage extends back to the Cambrian [In the Blink of an Eye: How Vision Sparked the Big Bang of Evolution (New York Basic Books, 2003)]. We investigated the ability to break camouflage and continue to see camouflaged targets after motion stops. This is crucial for the survival of hunting predators.

Embodied memory allows accurate and stable perception of hidden objects despite orientation change.

Rotating a scene in a frontoparallel plane (rolling) yields a change in orientation of constituent images. When using only information provided by static images to perceive a scene after orientation change, identification performance typically decreases (Rock & Heimer, 1957). However, rolling generates optic flow information that relates the discrete, static images (before and after the change) and forms an embodied memory that aids recognition.

Embodied memory: effective and stable perception by combining optic flow and image structure.

Visual perception studies typically focus either on optic flow structure or image structure, but not on the combination and interaction of these two sources of information. Each offers unique strengths in contrast to the other's weaknesses. Optic flow yields intrinsically powerful information about 3D structure, but is ephemeral.

Object recognition using metric shape.

Most previous studies of 3D shape perception have shown a general inability to visually perceive metric shape. In line with this, studies of object recognition have shown that only qualitative differences, not quantitative or metric ones can be used effectively for object recognition. Recently, Bingham and Lind (2008) found that large perspective changes (≥ 45°) allow perception of metric shape and Lee and Bingham (2010) found that this, in turn, allowed accurate feedforward reaches-to-grasp objects varying in metric shape.