Time To Contact for Obstacle Avoidance

Time to Contact (TTC) is a biologically inspired method for obstacle detection and reactive control of motion that does not require scene reconstruction or 3D depth estimation. TTC is a measure of distance expressed in time units. Our results show that TTC can be used to provide reactive obstacle avoidance for local navigation. In this paper we describe the principles of time to contact and show how time to contact can be measured from the rate of change of size of features. We show an algorithm for steering a vehicle using TTC to avoid obstacles while approaching a goal. We present the results of experiments for obstacle avoidance using TTC in static and dynamic environments.

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