# Efficient Optical flow and Stereo Vision for Velocity Estimation and Obstacle Avoidance on an Autonomous Pocket Drone

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.06702 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.06702/

## Key facts

- Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 20 Dec 2016.

## Built on by (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [NanoFlowNet: Real-time Dense Optical Flow on a Nano Quadcopter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.06918/) (2022)
- [RobustSpring: Benchmarking Robustness to Image Corruptions for Optical Flow, Scene Flow and Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09368/) (2025)
- [Learn by Observation: Imitation Learning for Drone Patrolling from Videos of A Human Navigator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.13193/) (2020)
- [Channel-Aware Distillation Transformer for Depth Estimation on Nano Drones](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10386/) (2023)
- [VIRUS-NeRF -- Vision, InfraRed and UltraSonic based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09477/) (2024)
- [Advanced Algorithms of Collision Free Navigation and Flocking for Autonomous UAVs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00166/) (2021)
- [Autonomous Aerial Robot for High-Speed Search and Intercept Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05465/) (2021)
- [Vision-based localization methods under GPS-denied conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11988/) (2022)
- [Vision-Guided Outdoor Flight and Obstacle Evasion via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24449/) (2026)
- [Optical Flow Sensor: A Direction-Selective Bionic Retina Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28686/) (2026)
- [Optical Flow from Photons](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.00499/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Miniature Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAV) are very suitable for flying in indoor environments, but autonomous navigation is challenging due to their strict hardware limitations. This paper presents a highly efficient computer vision algorithm called Edge-FS for the determination of velocity and depth. It runs at 20 Hz on a 4 g stereo camera with an embedded STM32F4 microprocessor (168 MHz, 192 kB) and uses feature histograms to calculate optical flow and stereo disparity. The stereo-based distance estimates are used to scale the optical flow in order to retrieve the drone's velocity. The velocity and depth measurements are used for fully autonomous flight of a 40 g pocket drone only relying on on-board sensors. The method allows the MAV to control its velocity and avoid obstacles.