Abstract—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 motion 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

Cite: Mohamad T. Alkowatly, Victor M. Becerra, and William Holderbaum, "Estimation of Visual Motion Parameters Used for Bio-inspired Navigation," Journal of Image and Graphics, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 120-124, September 2013. doi: 10.12720/joig.1.3.120-124