Improvement of sub-pixel global motion estimation in UAV image stabilization

Global motion estimation within frames is very important in the UAV(unmanned aerial vehicle) image stabilization system. A fast algorithm based on phase correlation and image down-sampling in sub-pixel was proposed. First, down-sampling of the two frames to quantitatively reduce calculate data. Then, take the method based of phase correlation to realize the global motion estimation in integer-pixel. When it calculated out, chooses the overlapped area of the two frames and interpolated them with zero, then adopts the method based on phase correlation to achieve the global motion estimation in sub-pixel. At last, weighted calculate the result in integer-pixel and the result in sub-pixel, the global motion displacement in sub-pixel of the two images will be calculated out. Experimental results show that, using the proposed algorithm can not only achieve good robustness to the influence of noise, illumination and partially sheltered but also improve the accuracy of motion estimation and efficiency of computing significantly.