Analysis of motor control strategy for frontal and sagittal planes of circular tracking movements using visual...

We aim to investigate a control strategy for the circular tracking movement in a three-dimensional (3D) space based on the accuracy of the visual information. After setting the circular orbits for the frontal and sagittal planes in the 3D virtual space, the subjects track a target moving at a constant velocity. The analysis is applied to two parameters of the polar coordinates, namely, ΔR (the difference in the distance from the center of a circular orbit) and Δω (the difference in the angular velocity). The movement in the sagittal plane provides different depth information depending on the position of the target in orbit, unlike the task of the frontal plane. Therefore, the circular orbit is divided into four quadrants for a statistical analysis of ΔR. In the sagittal plane, the error was two to three times larger in quadrants 1 and 4 than in quadrants 2 and 3 close to the subject. Here, Δω is estimated using a frequency analysis; the lower the accuracy of the visual information, the greater the periodicity. When comparing two different planes, the periodicity in the sagittal plane was approximately 1.7 to 2 times larger than that of the frontal plane. In addition, the average angular velocity of the target and tracer was within 0.6% during a single cycle. We found that if the amount of visual information is reduced, an optimal feedback control strategy can be used to reduce the positional error within a specific area.