Biomimetic Oculomotor Control

Abstract

Oculomotor control in a humanoid robot faces similar problems as biological oculomotor systems, that is, capturing targets accurately on a very narrow fovea, dealing with large delays in the control systems, the stabilization of gaze in the face of unknown perturbations of the body, selective attention, and the complexity of stereo vision. In this article, we suggest control circuits to realize three of the most basic oculomotor behaviors and their integration: the vestibulo-ocular reflex and optokinetic response (VOR–OKR) for gaze stabilization, smooth pursuit for tracking moving objects, and saccades for overt visual attention. Each of these behaviors and the mechanism for their integration were derived with inspiration from computational theories as well as behavioral and physiological data in neuroscience. Our implementations on humanoid demonstrate good performance of oculomotor behaviors, which proves to be a viable strategy to explore novel control mechanisms for humanoid robotics. Conversely, insights gained from our models have been able to directly influence views and provide new directions for computational neuroscience research.