[Tyler]

Your Robot's Peripersonal Space
     

We're all familiar with personal space; the invisible bubble that
encompasses our mental image of our body. Personal space expands to
encompass tools (even cars) that we mentally incorporate as part of our
body and may also change size according to our mood. We're less
conscious of Peripersonal space; an invisible bubble that represents
localized reaching distance. Any object in our peripersonal space can be
reached or
manipulated directly. Objects outside our peripersonal space require us
to move toward them before they can be manipulated. There has been some
debate as to how our brains determine the boundry of peripersonal space.
A new
paper (PDF format) suggests the brain doesn't determine the
peripersonal space boundry purely by vision but with the help of
feedback from the motor representation areas of the brain. Robots must
solve these same problems and understanding how the human brain does it
should give roboticists something new to think about.
   

http://robots.net/article/2613.html