Selective stabilization of images acquired by unmanned ground vehicles

This paper studies the problem of selective stabilization of images acquired by a camera mounted on a vehicle navigating a rough terrain. Selective stabilization is defined here as the separation of rotational components into smooth and residual oscillatory rotations. We consider both kinematic and kinetic models suitable for capturing these phenomena and achieve their separation. A scheme for detecting the occurrence and disappearance of smooth rotation is devised, and appropriate dynamic laws are employed to achieve selective stabilization. As a by product of the selective stabilization algorithm, 3-D locations of close feature points are estimated in a stabilized frame of reference, thus providing more useful structural information. Experiments using synthetic images for different scenarios show encouraging results of the proposed approach.