Practical Motion Estimation for Micro Aerial Vehicles Using Wide-Field-Integration of Optic Flow

This study proposes a motion estimation method using Wide-Field Integration (WFI) of Optic Flow for GPS-denied environments. The method enables estimation of both translational and rotational velocities of a flying vehicle using small onboard cameras. Importantly, the new theory introduced in this paper allows motion estimation from optic flow measured by a few commonly available cameras with limited fields of view, which are mounted at arbitrary positions and orientations on the drone. The validity of the proposed method is verified by numerical simulations and flight experiments using a drone.