A review of log-polar imaging for visual perception in robotics

Log-polar imaging consists of a type of methods that represent visual information with a space-variant resolution inspired by the visual system of mammals. It has been studied for about three decades and has surpassed conventional approaches in robotics applications, mainly the ones where real-time constraints make it necessary to utilize resource-economic image representations and processing methodologies. This paper surveys the application of log-polar imaging in robotic vision, particularly in visual attention, target tracking, egomotion estimation, and 3D perception. The concise yet comprehensive review offered in this paper is intended to provide novel and experienced roboticists with a quick and gentle overview of log-polar vision and to motivate vision researchers to investigate the many open problems that still need solving. To help readers identify promising research directions, a possible research agenda is outlined. Finally, since log-polar vision is not restricted to robotics, a couple of other areas of application are discussed. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.