prospective control

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Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Prospective control guides present action using information about what would occur if relevant conditions continued unchanged. RB2 illustrates it through optical time-to-contact relations used in braking and landing. The account concerns adjusting an unfolding trajectory, not foretelling a fixed future; a successful response can prevent the very contact the current information prospectively indicates.

Explanation

Lee’s tau relates an approaching object’s image expansion to projected contact under continued motion. The local unchanged-speed qualification matters: the entry does not convert that relation into an exact forecast under arbitrary acceleration. Tau is a specific optical example of prospective guidance, not a synonym for all anticipation or every control process.

Braking or landing involves acting now in response to an evolving relation. Subsequent action changes the trajectory and thus the information available next. The driver example of perception–action coupling locates prospective control within continuing feedback rather than a single internal prediction followed by an output detached from the environment.

AB’s accessible example and native note preserve the Lee genealogy. Its separate Rosen discussion requires model evidence case by case for the stricter anticipatory-system claim. The proposal therefore keeps optical prospective control distinct from a universal internal-model requirement, while refusing to equate self-maintenance alone with established model-based anticipation.

Scope and attribution

Retain the unchanged-motion qualification and avoid a universal control mechanism or inferred model.

AB — The Actual Book

The Lee example and stricter Rosen model criterion retain separate roles.

Occurrence locators: 94; Notes: 242.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Conditional optical relations guide an action that can change the projected outcome.

Occurrence locators: 65, 66, 74.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Optical prospective control is distinguished from generic future orientation and Rosen’s model-mediated anticipation.