Robot navigation by combining central and peripheral optical flow detection on a space-variant map

Abstract

Biological and technical autonomous agents have to achieve basic behaviors of navigation and obstacle avoidance. If they are confined to a monocular visual sensor the optical flow field induced by egomotion can be evaluated in the periphery for speed and direction control, whereas the central flow indicates imminent collisions. We show how a complex-logarithmic mapping of the image is especially apt for the combined evaluation of the flow field for these navigational tasks. We implemented a robot simulation tool to test reliability, speed, control and robustness of our scheme.