The Effects on Visual Information in a Robot in Environments with Oriented Contours

Abstract

For several decades experiments have been performed where animals have been reared in environments with orientationally restricted contours. The aim has been to find out what effects the visual field has on the development of the visual system in the brain. In this paper we describe similar experiments performed with a robot acting in an environment with only vertical contours and compare the results with the same robot in an ordinary office environment. Using metric projections of the informational distances between sensors it is shown that all visual sensors in the same vertical column are clustered together in the environment with only vertical contours. We also show how the informational structure of the sensors unfold when the robot moves from the environment with oriented contours to a normal environment.