Affordance Maps and the Geometry of Solution Spaces

I study throwing for two basic reasons. One, it is intrinsically fascinating and I want to know how it works. Second, it's become a rich domain in which to study affordances, and it is really forcing me to engage in great detail with the specifics of what these are.

My approach to affordances is that they are dynamical properties of tasks, which means that in order to study them, I need to be able to characterise my task dynamics in great detail. I developed an analysis (Wilson et al, 2016) to do this, and I also have a hunch this analysis will fit perfectly with the motor abundance analyses like UCM (Wilson, Zhu & Bingham, in press). I have recently discovered that another research group (led by Dagmar Sternad) has been doing this whole package for a few years, which is exciting news. Here I just want to briefly summarise the analysis and what the future might hold for this work.

Dear Disney; Let Me Help You VR

Disney posted a video recently from some researchers getting people to catch real balls in virtual reality (VR). It was a nice demo of some technology, and I don't actually want to be down on these researchers, but of course the psychology was lacking and there were some weird moments which I thought I would note for posterity. Also, Disney researchers, if you're reading, call me :)