Predictive Gaze Is Preserved but Reorganized toward Monitoring during Robot-Mediated Manipulation

Abstract

Goal-directed eye movements are a fundamental component of visuomotor control, enabling humans to anticipate and guide their actions. Whether this anticipatory and task-driven behavior is preserved when actions are executed through a robot rather than through one's own body remains unclear. Here we address this question by investigating gaze behavior during goal-directed telemanipulation to determine how visuomotor control adapts to altered embodiment. Our findings show that gaze remains strongly aligned with task goals, preserving its predictive role even during robot-mediated manipulation. At the same time, teleoperation systematically redistributes visual attention toward the robotic end-effector and manipulated objects, increasing online monitoring. These findings show that predictive gaze is not lost under altered embodiment, but reorganized in response to changes in sensory feedback and control demands. More broadly, they reveal the flexibility of the human visuomotor system when the natural sensorimotor coupling is disrupted and identify gaze as an informative signal for inferring action intentions in human-robot interaction.