UC Santa Barbara

The human visual field is composed of a high acuity region at the center of gaze called the fovea, and

its complement, the visual periphery. Not much is known about the computations and representations

of the visual periphery, as most of the focus in the field of human (and machine) vision is geared towards

foveal vision. Thus, the focus of this thesis will be on understanding the computations performed by

the human visual system in the visual periphery. In doing so, I will begin by modelling the perception

of clutter and how it changes as a function of the behavioural task and point of fixation, developing

a collection of foveated clutter models that enhance non-foveated models. I will then propose a new

metamer model that renders how the information is distorted in the visual field, and what this tells us

about the computations done in the visual periphery. Finally, I will conclude with the design of two

hybrid man-machine collaborative visual search systems that try to overcome the limitations in human

visual search imposed by the visual periphery and observer inefficiencies in terminating exploration.