Optic flow from unstable sequences containing unconstrained scenes through local velocity constancy maximization

Pauwels, Karl and Van Hulle, Marc M.

Proceedings of the British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC), Edinburgh, pp. 397–406, 2006

A novel stabilization method is introduced that enables the extraction of optic ﬂow from short unstable sequences. Contrary to traditional stabilization techniques that use approximative global motion models to estimate the full camera motion, our method estimates the unstable component of the camera motion only. This allows for the use of even simpler global motion models, while at the same time extending the validity to more diverse environments, such as close scenes containing independently moving objects. The unstable component of the camera motion is derived for each frame by maximizing the temporal constancy of the local velocities over the entire short sequence. The method is embedded within a phase-based optic ﬂow algorithm and tested on complex real-world sequences. The optic ﬂow obtained using our technique is much denser than that extracted directly from the original sequence. The proposed method also compares favorably to a more traditional stabilization technique.