The dynamic retina: contrast and motion detection for active vision

The dynamic retina is an efficient, biologically-inspired early vision architecture that is well-suited to active vision platforms. It exploits normally undesirable camera motion as a necessary step in detecting image contrast, using dynamic receptive fields instead of traditional spatial-neighborhood operators. A receptor response function, based on a light-adaptation model for vertebrate receptors, works together with the camera movements to compute spatial image contrast. The dynamic retina also responds to moving objects, producing a clear signature from which motion parameters can be extracted