perception-in-action

What do a baby sucking for milk and a golfer putting a ball have in common with an echolocating bat landing on a perch? In our laboratories we consider different forms of prospective guidance of movement, using echolocation, vision and other sensory means, in order to uncover common underlying principles of prospective control. A considerable part of our research is involved with the development of a general theory (tau theory) of movement guidance. Principal tenets of general tau theory are that (1) a central task in guiding movement is controlling the closure of spatial and/or force gaps between effectors (or sensory organs) and their goals, (2) this requires sensing the value of particular variables in sensory input flow fields, such as the optic flow field for vision and the acoustic flow field for echolocation, (3) the tau of each spatial and/or force gap - the time-to-closure of the gap at the current closure-rate - is basically what is sensed and controlled constantly to guide the movement, (4) a principal method of guiding movement is by tau-coupling the taus of different gaps by keeping the taus in constant ratio.