Optical transformations in visual navigation

The navigational tasks of computing time-to-impact and controlling movements within a specific range are addressed. By using specially designed lenses various components of these procedures, consisting of mathematical transformations, can be provided at image acquisition time, and therefore speed up execution time. This study discusses the optical implementation of different correlators based on the Fourier transform and Mellin transform. In addition, the fractional versions of these correlators are defined and analyzed. Based on the experimental results it can be concluded that the optical implementation of transformations can indeed play a significant role in speeding up execution time in respect to the above mentioned navigational tasks