Computation of Smooth Optical Flow in a Feedback Connected Analog Network
Alan A. Stocker, Rodney J. Douglas · CogPrints (University of Southampton) · 1998
In 1986, Tanner and Mead [1] implemented an interesting constraint satisfaction circuit for global motion sensing in aVLSI. We report here a new and improved aVLSI implementation that provides smooth optical flow as well as global motion in a two dimensional visual field. The computation of optical flow is an ill-posed problem, which expresses itself as the aperture problem. However, the optical flow can be estimated by the use of regularization methods, in which additional constraints are introduced in terms of a global energy functional that must be minimized. We show how the algorithmic constraints of Horn and Schunck [2] on computing smooth optical flow can be mapped onto the physical constraints of an equivalent electronic network. 1 Motivation The perception of apparent motion is crucial for navigation. Knowledge of local motion of the environment relative to the observer simplifies the calculation of important tasks such as time-to-contact or focus-of-expansion. There are sever...