Optical flow techniques in biomimetic UAV vision

Abstract

Optical flow techniques using grayscale image sequences are known to provide powerful solutions for motion estimation and shape reconstruction applications. In this paper, recent advances in optical flow computation from color image sequences are compared and refined to provide alternative optical flow computation techniques for biomimetic vision and control systems. Experimentation is performed in the specific context of flying insect-inspired systems to provide unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or flying robots with the ability to navigate through near-Earth environment without colliding with obstacles