Effect of travel speed on visual control of steering toward a goal

Abstract

We systematically examined the effect of travel speed on the control of steering toward a goal. The display (113°H×89°V) simulated a participant traveling at 2m/s, 8m/s, or 15m/s over a textured ground plane. Participants used a joystick to control the curvature of their path of forward travel to steer toward a target. Across 16 participants, when target egocentric direction cue was unavailable thus participants had to rely on optic flow alone for steering, participants steered to align their heading but not their path of forward travel with the target at all travel speeds tested. Furthermore, the mean last sec heading error and the mean steering delay decreased as travel speed increased. When target egocentric direction was available for steering but was offset from the heading specified by optic flow, participants’ steering was affected by the offset target egocentric direction at all travel speeds tested. Furthermore, the last sec heading error decreased but the mean steering delay increased as travel speed increased. We conclude that while people are increasingly more accurate and efficient in using optic flow for steering when travel speed increases, high-speed travel does not affect the type of visual strategy used for the control of steering toward a goal.