High-speed embedded optical flow measurement system for real-time use

In recent years, there are more and more opportunities for robots to be active in society. It is necessary to develop a system that processes information that enters the robot's vision faster and more accurately. In the development of visual sensors, the calculation speed and accuracy of the measurement are issues that should be improved. Parallel trade off of the processing was used as a means of speeding up the calculation. In this research, we have developed a system that can measure optical flow with an embedded microprocessor, to detect obstacles in real time and accurately detect its own movement speed on a small robot. We have conducted two experiments, one in which the camera was fixed and a moving subject was photographed, and the other in which the camera was moved and photographed. Experimented results show that was possible to reduce the calculation time by about one-third for real-time processing, and it was possible to detect the difference in the speed of the camera itself.