title: The information content of panoramic images II: view-based navigation in nonrectangular experimental arenas.
abstract: Two recent studies testing navigation of rats in swimming pools have posed problems for any account of the use of purely geometric properties of space in navigation (M. Graham, M. A. Good, A. McGregor, & J. M. Pearce, 2006; J. M. Pearce, M. A. Good, P. M. Jones, & A. McGregor, 2004). The authors simulated 1 experiment from each study in a virtual reality environment to test whether experimental results could be explained by view-based navigation. The authors recorded a reference image at the target location and then determined global panoramic image differences between this image and images taken at regularly spaced locations throughout the arena. A formal model, in which an agent attempts to minimize image differences between the reference image and current views, generated trajectories that could be compared with the search performance of rats. For both experiments, this model mimics many aspects of rat behavior. View-based navigation provides a sufficient and parsimonious explanation for a range of navigational behaviors of rats under these experimental conditions.
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, Research School of Biological Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
authors.forename: Allen
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cheung
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Stürzl
authors.forename: Jochen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zeil
authors.forename: Ken
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Cheng
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D007858:Learning; D051381:Rats; D013028:Space Perception; D013037:Spatial Behavior; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D014796:Visual Perception