Excavation of super-impossible objects and their mechanisms

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 21K19801
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Medium-sized Section 61:Human informatics and related fields
• Research Institution: Meiji University
• Principal Investigator: Sugihara Kokichi 明治大学, 研究・知財戦略機構(中野), 研究推進員 (40144117)
• Project Period (FY): 2021-07-09 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 不可能立体 / 視覚の数理モデル / 平行移動錯視 / 左右反転錯視 / 回転並進混合錯視 / 両眼立体視 / 対称性 / 生き物

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The "super-impossible object" is a new type of an illusion object, which is a real physical object but whose behavior looks impossible even if we see it by two eyes. We found many new examples of this type of objects, which include the "translation-illusion object" which appears to translate into a front mirror instead of making a U-turn, and the "double-mirror illusion" which creates the translation illusion and the left-right-reversal illusion simultaneously. Those objects have two special properties: first, they are line-symmetric or plane-symmetric and those symmetries create the illusion, and secondly, they mainly simulate the shapes of living animals and hence we can recognize the category of the animal even if the shape changes due to the change of the viewpoint. We found those properties make the illusion robust against the viewpoint shift, and thus we established the start point of the theoretical scheme of the super-impossible object.

Free Research Field

数理工学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

実在する立体を見てあり得ないと感じる不可能立体錯視は特別な視点から片方の目で見たときだけ成立するという従来の常識に反して、両目で見ても成立する不可能立体錯視があることおよびその理論的根拠を明らかにできたことは、視覚科学の基本部分に修正をもたらすという学術的意義を持つ。視点位置を厳密に制限しなくても不可能性を表現できる本錯視立体は、視覚芸術の彫刻分野に新しい表現手段を提供するという文化的意義を持つ。さらに、両目で見れば奥行きは正しくわかるという常識を裏切る錯視の存在を明らかにしたことは、見間違いから生じる事故を防ぐ新しい対策の必要性を提言するという社会的意義を持つ。