A coordinate framework for optic flow and disparity Glennerster and Read A single coordinate framework for optic flow and binocular disparity 1¶* 2¶ Andrew Glennerster and Jenny C.A. Read 1 School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6AL 2 Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, NE2 4HH ¶ These authors contributed equally to this work. * Corresponding author. Email
[email protected] (AG) A coordinate framework for optic flow and disparity Glennerster and Read Abstract Optic flow is two dimensional, but no special qualities are attached to one or other of these dimensions. For binocular disparity, on the other hand, the terms 'horizontal' and 'vertical' disparities are commonly used. This is odd, since binocular disparity and optic flow describe essentially the same thing. The difference is that, generally, people tend to fixate relatively close to the direction of heading as they move, meaning that fixation is close to the optic flow epipole, whereas, for binocular vision, fixation is close to the head-centric midline, i.e. approximately 90 degrees from the binocular epipole. For fixating animals, some separations of flow may lead to simple algorithms for the judgement of surface structure and the control of action. We consider the following canonical flow patterns that sum to produce overall flow: (i) ‘towards’ flow, the component of translational flow produced by approaching (or retreating from) the fixated object, which produces pure radial flow on the retina; (ii) ‘sideways’ flow, the remaining component of translational flow, which is produced by translation of the optic centre orthogonal to the cyclopean line of sight and (iii) ‘vergence’ flow, rotational flow produced by a counter-rotation of the eye in order to maintain fixation.