Humans tend to walk in circles as directed by memorized visual locations at large distances

ABSTRACT

Human veering while walking blindfolded or walking straight without any visual cues has been widely studied over the last 100 years, but the results are still controversial. The present study attempted to describe and understand the human ability to maintain the direction of a trajectory while walking without visual or audio cues with reference to a proposed mathematical model and using data collected by a global positioning system (GPS). Fifteen right-handed people of both genders, aged 18-30 years, walked without vision in an open field directly toward a target after seeing it for a brief period of time. Time and distance were directly measured by the GPS receiver. The mathematical analysis indicated that both linear and angular velocities determined the shape of the trajectory. Careful observation of the trajectories clearly showed a geometrical pattern, and the circular trajectory was the most frequent. Such behavior can be explained by the almost constant linear and angular velocity during the walk. From the perspective of the mathematical model, angular velocity is the observable physical quantity that most determines the trajectory pattern. One can notice that better performance (i.e., lower angular velocity) is related to longer distances when comparing an individual's circular trajectory walking performance as a function of different target distances (i.e., 30.00, 41.60, 57.69, and 80.00 m).