A comparison of three methods for measure of Time to Contact

Time to contact (TTC) is a biologically inspired method for obstacle detection and reactive control of motion that does not require scene reconstruction or 3D depth estimation. Estimating TTC is difficult because it requires a stable and reliable estimate of the rate of change of distance between image features. In this paper we propose a new method to measure time to contact, active contour affine scale (ACAS). We experimentally and analytically compare ACAS with two other recently proposed methods: scale invariant ridge segments (SIRS), and image brightness derivatives (IBD). Our results show that ACAS provides a more accurate estimation of TTC when the image flow may be approximated by an affine transformation, while SIRS provides an estimate that is generally valid, but may not always be as accurate as ACAS, and IBD systematically over-estimate time to contact.