On perceptual advantages of eye-head active control

Abstract

The paper presents a theoretical study on the perceptual advantages related to the active control of a binocular vision system. In particular the presentation focuses on the process of improving perception, a task strategically important in humans and many vertebrates. The analysis is based on an anthropomorphic system; the sensitivity of the transformation from world to camera coordinates is used as a cost function for driving the movements of the eye-head system. The control strategy obtained in this way allows to formally motivate, outside of a purely behavioral context, some relevant aspects of the biological vision like fixation, vergence and eye-head compensation.