THE DYNAMIC RETINA - CONTRAST AND MOTION DETECTION FOR ACTIVE VISION

This paper presents an efficient, biologically-inspired early vision a rchitecture, the dynamic retina, that is well-suited to highly active and responsive vision platforms. The dynamic retina exploits normally undesirable camera motion as a necessary step in detecting image contr ast, by using dynamic receptive fields instead of traditional spatial- neighborhood operators. We analyze the continuous miniature ''noise'' movements made by active imaging systems, and show that they can be ex ploited to detect contrast. We then develop an appropriate photorecept or response function, based on light-adaptation models for vertebrate receptors. Together, the movements and response function over time com pute image contrast. The dynamic retina is also useful for motion anal ysis, since moving objects processed by the system leave a clear signa ture from which motion parameters can be extracted. Results from a num ber of experiments with real video sequences demonstrate the effective ness of the system for both contrast detection and motion analysis.