The main goal of this project is to investigate how the human visual system perceives and recognises three-dimensional objects. How it is, for example that we know what an object is when we look at it. To study this we will be measuring the eye movements of people under many different viewing conditions. By analysing where people look when they are viewing objects we hope to be able to better understand how our visual system functions: what kinds of information about the shapes of objects it processes and how we adapt to different viewing conditions. A further challenge of this project is to apply this knowledge about the human visual system to the development of more efficient artificial, computer-driven, vision systems - such as robotic systems. To achieve this goal, we will be developing a project dedicated website to publicise our research findings to researchers in both human and computer vision, as well as to industry, commerce and the general public. We will also be presenting the results of our work at scientific conferences in both research fields. We hope that this will stimulate future inter-disciplinary research in this area and stimulate interest from industrial and commercial partners.

Object classification task. Methodological details described in Davitt, L. I., Cristino, F., Wong, A. C.-N., & Leek, E. C. (2013, December 23). Shape Information Mediating Basic- and Subordinate-Level Object Recognition Revealed by Analyses of Eye Movements. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0034983