Introduction to visual motion analysis for mobile robots

Abstract

Human being has an extraordinary capability for motion perception due to its remarkable visual sensing system that makes it possible to perceive, distinguish and characterize the different moving elements of the environment. Thus, it extracts information through sensory experience and conducts reliable judgments based on intrinsic motion features, namely, location, direction, trajectory, magnitude, colors, boundary and shape. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for mobile robots. The critical nature of visual perception for these kinds of systems turns motion detection and analysis as one of the most relevant areas discussed on the literature, existing several models and methods to perform motion analysis in a variety of environments. This paper discusses motion analysis for mobile robots. A brief description about the complexity of motion perception based on moving observations and for surveillance applications is presented. In addition, the most often encountered approaches and future orientations are also discussed. © 2015 Springer International Publishing.