Perception of Heading From Optical Flow: Effects of Conflicting Velocity and Trajectory Information

121 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993.Previous research on heading has focused primarily on two classes of visual information for determining heading: the radial trajectories of optical flow, and invariant sources of trajectory information in retinal flow. The present research presents an alternative source of information for determining heading based on gradients of statistical properties of retinal image flow. This approach differs from previous approaches in that it emphasizes the importance of the distribution of the magnitude of velocity within the image for determining heading. Three experiments were conducted to examine the effects on heading discrimination of displays where information for heading based on the distribution of image velocity conflicted with information for heading based on the radial structure of the flow field. The results indicate that heading discriminations are not solely based on trajectory information. Rather, the results suggest that multiple sources of information are used by observers to determine their direction of heading.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD