Optical flow angular rate determination

One application of optical flow analyses is to determine the egomotion of moving bodies based on intensity variations in sequential sensor imagery. Full egomotion determination requires an estimate of the body´s translational velocity as well as the angular rates. Such calculations of the full egomotion require solving a system of nonlinear equations. However, if the assumption is made that the translational velocities can be estimated by another sensor (i.e. accelerometers), the resulting equations for the angular rate prediction become linear. This paper presents the set of equations for the determination of the angular rates and range from the spatio-temporal image gradients introduced when employing the optical flow constraint. Results of simulations show typical accuracy for the proposed approach.