Gaze allocation analysis for a visually guided manipulation task

Abstract

Findings from eye movement research in humans have demonstrated that the task determines where to look. One hypothesis is that the purpose of looking is to reduce uncertainty about properties relevant to the task. Following this hypothesis, we define a model that poses the problem of where to look as one of maximising task performance by reducing task relevant uncertainty. We implement and test our model on a simulated humanoid robot which has to move objects from a table into containers. Our model outperforms and is more robust than two other baseline schemes in terms of task performance whilst varying three environmental conditions, reach/grasp sensitivity, observation noise and the camera's field of view. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.