Reactions to peripheral image motion using a head/eye platform

In this paper we demonstrate four real-time reactive responses to movement in everyday scenes using an active head/eye platform. We first describe the design and realization of a high bandwidth four degree-of-freedom head/eye platform and visual feedback loop for the exploration of motion processing within active vision. The vision system divides processing into two scales and two broad functions. At a coarse, quasi-peripheral scale, detection and segmentation of new motion occurs across the whole image, and at fine scale tracking of already detected motion takes place within a foveal region. We detail several simple coarse scale motion sensors which run concurrently at 25Hz with latencies around 100ms. We demonstrate the use of these to drive the following real-time responses: (i) head/eye saccades to moving regions of interest; (ii) a panic response to looming motion; (iii) an opto-kinetic response to continuous motion across the image and (iv) smooth pursuit of a moving target using motion alone.