Visual odometry using commodity optical flow

Abstract

A wide variety of techniques for visual navigation using robot-mounted cameras have been described over the past several decades, yet adoption of optical flow navigation techniques has been slow. This demo illustrates what visual navigation has to offer: robust hazard detection (including precipices and obstacles), high-accuracy open-loop odometry, and stable closed-loop motion control implemented via an optical flow based visual odometry system. This work is based on 1) open source vision code, 2) common computing hardware, and 3) inexpensive, consumer-quality cameras, and as such should be accessible to many robot builders. Demo Overview Optical flow field and camera ego-motion estimation have