Error analysis of combined optical-flow and stereo passive ranging

Optical-flow ranging in which the stream of two-dimensional images obtained from a forward-looking forward-moving passive sensor is used to compute range to points in the field of view, and triangulation based on stereo images obtained from at least two stationary sensors are combined. The potential accuracies of the combined optical flow and stereo passive-ranging system are analyzed in the context of helicopter nap-of-the-earth obstacle avoidance. The Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) is developed for the combined system under the assumption of a random angular misalignment common to both cameras of a stereo pair. It is shown that the range accuracy degradations caused by misalignment are negligible compared to those for a monocular optical-flow system