Intermittent control and retinal optic flow when maintaining a curvilinear path

Journal article, 2025

The topic of how humans navigate using vision has been studied for decades. Research has identified that the emergent patterns of retinal optic flow from gaze behavior may play an essential role in human curvilinear locomotion. However, the link towards control has been poorly understood. Lately, it has been shown that human locomotor behavior is corrective, formed from intermittent decisions and responses. A simulated virtual reality experiment was conducted where fourteen participants drove through a texture-rich simplistic road environment with left and right curve bends. The goal was to investigate how human intermittent lateral control can be associated with the retinal optic flow-based cues and vehicular heading as sources of information. This work reconstructs dense retinal optic flow using a numerical estimation of optic flow with measured gaze behavior. By combining retinal optic flow with the drivable lane surface, a cross-correlational relation to intermittent steering behavior could be observed. In addition, a novel method of identifying constituent ballistic correction using particle swarm optimization was demonstrated to analyze the incremental correction-based behavior. Through time delay analysis, our results show a human response time of approximately \SI{0.14}{\second} for retinal optic flow-based cues and 0.44s for heading-based cues, measured from stimulus onset to steering correction onset. These response times were further delayed by 0.17s when the vehicle-fixed steering wheel was visibly removed. In contrast to classical continuous control strategies, our findings support and argue for the intermittency property in human neuromuscular control of muscle synergies, through the principle of satisficing behavior: to only actuate when there is a perceived need for it. This is aligned with the human sustained sensorimotor model, which uses readily available information and internal models to produce informed responses through evidence accumulation to initiate appropriate ballistic correction, even amidst another correction.