Visual motion cues play an important role in animal and humans locomotion without the need to extract actual ego-motion information. This paper demonstrates a method for estimating the visual motion parameters, namely the Time-To-Contact (TTC), Focus of Expansion (FOE), and image angular velocities, from a sparse optical flow estimation registered from a downward looking camera. The presented method is capable of estimating the visual motion parameters in a complicated 6 degrees of freedom

more »

... n and in real time with suitable accuracy for mobile robots visual navigation.  Index Terms-time-to-contact, focus of expansion, image angular velocity, optic flow models Victor Becerra is a Professor in Automatic Control. His research interests include computational optimal control, nonlinear control, system identification, robotics, and artificial intelligence. William Holderbaum is a Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Engineering. His research interests include boolean input systems, geometric control, rehabilitation engineering, and smart grid systems. The are all with the School of Systems Engineering at University of Reading, UK.