In the human eye, the fovea centralis provides sharp central vision by packing in a high concentration of cone photoreceptors and connecting about half the nerve fibers from the optic nerve onto those cones. This gives high definition to the center 2 percent of the visual field, providing detailed vision and allowing us to read and track clearly the most important objects in the visual field.

TACO, a mangled acronym squeezed from Three-dimensional Adaptive Camera with Object Detection and Foveation, is a European research project applying high-definition 3D vision of a small centralized area to enhance robot vision. The TACO camera will emulate the human eye to increase the resolution of a small central area of the viewing field, refining the focus area to important objects, speeding recognition time and visual processing speeds with a three to 10 times increase in spatial recognition and frame rate. Advances in robust yet low-cost hardware, and the software necessary to rapidly detect objects in the environment, drive the project that started in February 2010 and will run three years.