Introduction - If you have any usage issues, please Google them yourself
Robust velocity and position estimation at high
update rates is crucial for mobile robot navigation. In recent
years optical flow sensors based on computer mouse hardware
chips have been shown to perform well on micro air vehicles.
Since they require more light than present in typical indoor
and outdoor low-light conditions, their practical use is limited.
We present an open source and open hardware design 1 of an
optical flow sensor based on a machine vision CMOS image
sensor for indoor and outdoor applications with very high light
sensitivity. Optical flow is estimated on an ARM Cortex M4
microcontroller in real-time at 250 Hz update rate. Angular
rate compensation with a gyroscope and distance scaling using
a ultrasonic sensor are performed onboard. The system is
designed for further extension and adaption and shown in-flight
on a micro air vehicle.