Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Binocular vision
Summary
In biology, binocular vision is a type of vision in which an animal has two eyes capable of facing the same direction to perceive a single three-dimensional image of its surroundings. Binocular vision does not typically refer to vision where an animal has eyes on opposite sides of its head and shares no field of view between them, like in some animals.
Neurological researcher Manfred Fahle has stated six specific advantages of having two eyes rather than just one:
It gives a creature a "spare eye" in case one is damaged.
It gives a wider field of view. For example, humans have a maximum horizontal field of view of approximately 190 degrees with two eyes, approximately 120 degrees of which makes up the binocular field of view (seen by both eyes) flanked by two uniocular fields (seen by only one eye) of approximately 40 degrees.
It can give stereopsis in which binocular disparity (or parallax) provided by the two eyes' different positions on the head gives precise depth perception. This also allows a creature to break the camouflage of another creature.
It allows the angles of the eyes' lines of sight, relative to each other (vergence), and those lines relative to a particular object (gaze angle) to be determined from the images in the two eyes. These properties are necessary for the third advantage.
It allows a creature to see more of, or all of, an object behind an obstacle. This advantage was pointed out by Leonardo da Vinci, who noted that a vertical column closer to the eyes than an object at which a creature is looking might block some of the object from the left eye but that part of the object might be visible to the right eye.
It gives binocular summation in which the ability to detect faint objects is enhanced.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.