The Visual Perception of Biological Motion in Adults

This chapter presents research about the roles of different levels of visual processing and motor control on our ability to perceive biological motion produced by humans and by robots. The levels of visual processing addressed include high-level semantic processing of action prototypes based on global features as well as lower-level local processing based on kinematic features. A further important aspect concerns the interaction between these two levels of processing and the interaction between our own movement patterns and their impact on our visual perception of biological motion. The authors’ results from their research describe the conditions under which semantic and kinematic features influence one another in our understanding of human actions. In addition, results are presented to illustrate the claim that motor control and different levels of the visual perception of biological motion have clear consequences for human–robot interaction. Understanding the movement of robots is greatly facilitated by the movement that is consistent with the psychophysical constraints of Fitts’ law, minimum jerk and the two-thirds power law.