Error Analysis for a Navigation Algorithm Based on Optical-Flow and a Digital Terrain Map

This paper deals with the error analysis of a novel navigation algorithm that uses as input the sequence of images acquired from a moving camera and a Digital Terrain (or Elevation) Map (DTM/DEM). More specifically, it has been shown that the optical flow derived from two consecutive camera frames can be used in combination with a DTM to estimate the position, orientation and ego-motion parameters of the moving camera. As opposed to previous works, the proposed approach does not require an intermediate explicit reconstruction of the 3D world. In the present work the sensitivity of the algorithm outlined above is studied. The main sources for errors are identified to be the optical-flow evaluation and computation, the quality of the information about the terrain, the structure of the observed terrain and the trajectory of the camera. By assuming appropriate characterization of these error sources, a closed form expression for the uncertainty of the pose and motion of the camera is firs...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: CVPR
• Authors: Ehud Rivlin, Héctor Rotstein, Ronen Lerner
• Keywords: Computer Vision, Consecutive Camera Frames, CVPR 2004, Error Sources, Extensive Numerical Simulations, Intermediate Explicit Reconstruction, Observed Terrain