An efficient neuromorphic analog network for motion estimation

Abstract

Optical flow estimation is a critical mechanism for autonomous mobile robots as it provides a range of useful information. As real-time processing is mandatory in this case, an efficient solution is the use of specific very large scale integration (VLSI) analog circuits. This paper presents a simple and regular architecture based on analog circuits, which implements the entire processing line from photoreceptor to accurate and reliable optical flow estimation. The algorithm we propose, is an energy-based method using a novel wideband velocity-tuned filter which proves to be an efficient alternative to the well-known Gabor filters. Our approach shows that a high level of accuracy can be obtained from a small number of loosely tuned filters. It exhibits similar or improved performance to that of other existing algorithms, but with a much lower complexity.