Obstacle avoidance and motion-induced navigation

In nature, the visual detection of motion appears to be used in a variety of tasks, ranging from collision avoidance to posture maintenance. Many insects seem to rely primarily on information provided by an array of elementary movement detectors in order to navigate. Moreover, experimental evidence suggests that motion information is interpreted at an early stage of the insect visual system, and may be closely linked to motor control. A motion detector, whose design is based on some of the characteristics of the insect visual system, has been implemented on a single VLSI chip. This paper shows the manner in which motion information, provided by the chip in real-time, may be utilised by the control system of an autonomous vehicle in low-level perceptual tasks.