Abstract

The visual control of locomotion raises numerous problem that have increasingly preoccupied researchers in recent years. Regulating stride length and foot placement as one moves amongst obstacles: or deciding when and how to begin braking as a target is approached are just two examples that illustrate the challenging spatio-temporal constraints imposed by the external environment as an animal moves around. The central problem is to understand how vision intervenes in such regulation: in particular, to identify the different kinds of visual information that are involved, and to understand the nature of the regulationto which they give rise. The role of vision in the control of locomotor tasks has attracted considerable interest in recent years. The present paper reviews such studies in relation to the key questions 1) What is the role of vision in the planning and anticipating control of locomotion? 2) What parameters of locomotion are manipulated in such control? 3) What optical information corresponds to these parameters? 4) What kind of coupling exists between these optical and motor variables? Verf.-Referat