Round table on camouflage

Research into camouflage has exploded over the last decade or so, with interdisciplinarity proving to be a key feature for progress. In our round table, we will address three main questions: (i) why are we researching camouflage; (ii) how do we research camouflage; and (iii) what is camouflage, and how do we measure it? These are really just starting points for what we hope will be an informative, interactive and wide-ranging discussion. Gibson Revisited: toward understanding sensory affordances of real-world environments Ute Leonards, School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol More than 50 years ago, JJ Gibson introduced the concept of affordances, which directly link actions to available information in our environments. Yet, even today, there is little crosstalk between visual cognition research and locomotion research, preventing us from understanding the affordances of sensory environments in real-world environments. In my talk, I will outline how following a Gibsonian approach could help us to find solutions to pressing societal issues such as understanding how the environments we create impact our health and wellbeing or how we could reduce fall risk in an ageing population. In a series of experiments, I will provide evidence of how the visual environment affects gait, even in hazard-free environments during walking on even ground—be it through the patterns on floor coverings or, more generally, the type of visual environment we are in. I will finish my talk with an outlook that goes beyond the research laboratory to modern urban design and will present a first attempt at a theoretical framework of Sustainable Urban Design informed by vision sciences.