Globally Optimal Contrast Maximisation for Event-based Motion Estimation
This provides a robust solution for event-based motion estimation in applications like video stabilisation and attitude estimation, though it is incremental as it builds on existing contrast maximisation methods.
The paper tackles the problem of motion estimation from event streams by proposing a globally optimal algorithm based on branch-and-bound to avoid local minima in contrast maximisation, achieving exact solutions for rotational motion with processing times of 300 seconds for 50,000 events.
Contrast maximisation estimates the motion captured in an event stream by maximising the sharpness of the motion compensated event image. To carry out contrast maximisation, many previous works employ iterative optimisation algorithms, such as conjugate gradient, which require good initialisation to avoid converging to bad local minima. To alleviate this weakness, we propose a new globally optimal event-based motion estimation algorithm. Based on branch-and-bound (BnB), our method solves rotational (3DoF) motion estimation on event streams, which supports practical applications such as video stabilisation and attitude estimation. Underpinning our method are novel bounding functions for contrast maximisation, whose theoretical validity is rigorously established. We show concrete examples from public datasets where globally optimal solutions are vital to the success of contrast maximisation. Despite its exact nature, our algorithm is currently able to process a 50,000 event input in 300 seconds (a locally optimal solver takes 30 seconds on the same input), and has the potential to be further speeded-up using GPUs.