Two-mode control: an oculomotor-based approach to tracking systems

The paper aims to use the knowledge about how the visual system organizes the components of oculomotor system to propose a new tracking paradigm. The tracking system is assumed to be described by linear time-invariant discrete-time state-space equations. The approach described, motivated by the behavior of the visual system, is to switch off the smooth controller whenever a violation occurs and design a time-optimal control action, i.e., a “saccade”, to drive the control system so that the constraint is satisfied after the shortest possible time interval. After that, the smooth controller is switched back into the loop. The way this switching is performed is critical for obtaining “good behavior”. A method is proposed which is based on a careful definition of the target set for the saccade. The tracking system proposed in this paper is closely related to recent results in linear optimal and robust control theory