Rolling and swaying motion estimation for a mobile robot by using omnidirectional optical flows

Described here is a method for estimating rolling and swaying motions of a mobile robot using optical flow. We have proposed an image sensor with a hyperboloidal mirror for the vision-based navigation of a mobile robot. Its name is HyperOmni Vision. The radial component of optical flow in HyperOmni Vision has a periodic characteristic. The circumferential component of optical flow has a symmetric characteristic. The proposed method makes use of these characteristic to estimate robustly the rolling and swaying motion of the mobile robot. Correspondence to: Y. Yagi e-mail: y-yagi@sys.es.osaka-u.ac.jp     

Attitude estimation and control of a 3-DOF lab helicopter only based on optical flow

This paper proposes an attitude estimation method based on optical flow to solve the attitude tracking control problem for a three degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) lab helicopter. First, the relationship between optical flow and the motion of a general unmanned aerial vehicle is derived from the transformation between the image coordinate frame and the world coordinate frame. Then, an expression for the angular velocity of the 3-DOF helicopter is deduced only based on optical flow, and the attitude information is acquired by solving nonlinear equations. Finally, using visual feedback, a linear quadratic regulation (LQR) controller is designed for hovering and tracking, which consists of a feedforward controller and a LQR state feedback controller. Closed-loop experimental results on the lab helicopter demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed estimation and control methods.