The neurophysiology of insects suggests that they are able to track conspecifics, which manifest as small targets, against a variety of backgrounds with ease. This perception occurs at the same stage as motion perception suggesting a role for optic flow in target discrimination. Optic flow also is an attractive method of perception for visual system design due to the possibility of parallel processing that lends itself to implementation in hardware acceleration. This paper investigates some of the limits for reliable target discrimination solely from an optic flow field which are dependent on algorithm parameters, the nature of the target, and imager noise properties.

Date Published: 22 May 2015
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 9467, Micro- and Nanotechnology Sensors, Systems, and Applications VII, 94671Q (22 May 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2179259

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9467:
Micro- and Nanotechnology Sensors, Systems, and Applications VII
Thomas George; Achyut K. Dutta; M. Saif Islam, Editor(s)