Qualitative detection of motion by a moving observer

Two complementary methods for the detection of moving objects by a moving observer are described. The first (constraint ray filtering) uses a constraint that restricts the projected velocity at any image point to a 1-D locus in velocity space to detect motion inconsistent with a rigid world assumption. The second (animate motion detection) utilizes a constraint on the time-rate-of-change of projected velocity due to smooth observer motion to detect moving objects such as animals and maneuvering vehicles whose projected motion changes rapidly. In both cases, the qualitative nature of the constraints allows the methods to be used with the inexact motion information typically available from real image sequences. Implementations of the methods that run in real time on a parallel pipelined image processing system are described