Feature-based Recursive Observer Design for Homography Estimation

This paper presents a new algorithm for online estimation of a sequence of homographies applicable to image sequences obtained from robotic vehicles equipped with vision sensors. The approach taken exploits the underlying Special Linear group structure of the set of homographies along with gyroscope measurements and direct point-feature correspondences between images to develop temporal filter for the homography estimate. Theoretical analysis and experimental results are provided to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed algorithm. The experimental results show excellent performance even in the case of very fast camera motion (relative to frame rate), severe occlusion, and in the presence of specular reflections.