In-Car Video Stabilization using Focus of Expansion

Abstract

Video stabilization is a very important step for vision based applications in the vehicular technology because the accuracy of these applications such as obstacle distance estimation, lane detection and tracking can be affected by bumpy roads and oscillation of vehicle. Conventional methods suffer from either the zooming effect which caused by a camera movement or some motion of surrounding vehicles. In order to overcome this problem, we propose a novel video stabilization method using FOE(Focus of Expansion). When a vehicle moves, optical flow diffuses from the FOE and the FOE is equal to an epipole. If a vehicle moves with vibration, the position of the epipole in the two consecutive frames is changed by oscillation of the vehicle. Therefore, we carry out video stabilization using motion vector estimated from the amount of change of the epipoles. Experiment results show that the proposed method is more efficient than conventional methods.