A direct optic flow-based strategy for inverse flight altitude estimation with monocular vision and IMU measurements
With tiny and limited nervous systems, insects demonstrate a remarkable ability to fly through
complex environments. Optic flow has been identified to play a crucial role in regulating flight
conditions and navigation in flies and bees. In robotics, optic flow has been widely studied thanks
to the low computational requirements. However, with only monocular visual information, optic flow
is inherently devoid of a scale factor required for estimating the absolute distance. In this paper,
we propose a strategy for estimating the flight altitude of a flying robot with a ventral camera by
combining the optic flow with measurements from an inertial measurement unit. Instead of using the
prevalent feature-based approach for calculation of optic flow, we implement a direct method that
evaluates the flow information via image gradients. We show that the direct approach notably
simplifies the computation steps compared to the feature-based method. When combined with an
extended Kalman fi...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - Category: Science Authors: Pakpong Chirarattananon Source Type: research
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