Monocular Vision Obstacle Detection Method Based on Radial Optical Flow for Rotor UAV

To solve the problem of traditional Pyramid LK optical flow algorithm's poor accuracy and adaptability for rotor UAV to detect obstacle in complex outdoor environment, a monocular autonomous real-time obstacle detection method based on radial optical flow is proposed. In the optical flow, the radial optical flow is computed by fusing Pyramid LK optical flow with tangential optical flow, and a new obstacles decision strategy to detect obstacles based on the radial optical flow is put forward. Experimental results show that without increasing the complexity of algorithm, the proposed method can get a higher accuracy and better adaptability than traditional Pyramid LK algorithm, which can meet the requirements of UAV autonomous obstacle avoidance