A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book
Real-Time Fisheye Frame Stabilization
Authors: Nevalainen, Paavo; Humayun, Muhammad Farhan; Borzyszkowski, Adrian; Laesvuori, Jori; Heikkonen, Jukka
Editors: Portugal, David
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland
Publication year: 2026
Journal: Studies in Computational Intelligence
Book title : Recent Advances in Robotic Perception for Forestry
Series title: Studies in Computational Intelligence
Number in series: 1258
First page : 253
Last page: 281
ISBN: 978-3-032-15811-6
eISBN: 978-3-032-15812-3
ISSN: 1860-949X
eISSN: 1860-9503
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-15812-3_10
Publication's open availability at the time of reporting: No Open Access
Publication channel's open availability : No Open Access publication channel
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-15812-3_10
Fisheye cameras are effective tools for autonomous robotics applications in unstructured, non-built environments due to their wide field of view. The wide view is particularly beneficial for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and sensor fusion. In forest environments, the horizon is generally unavailable and therefore conventional horizon stabilization is not possible. In particular, frame instability commonly affects small ground-based autonomous vehicles with multiple tracking tasks due to significant rotations, especially when navigating rough forest terrain. To address these challenges, we propose a robust method for stabilizing the fisheye video stream by minimizing the image difference of sequential frames through the use of rotational pixel maps. A precomputed library of pixel maps is generated for real-time computation. The stabilized output can improve the reliability of SLAM and sensor fusion applications. We also review current video stabilization techniques relevant to small autonomous vehicles and highlight the unique challenges faced by forested environments. Our experimental results are demonstrated through two use cases in different environments with performance metrics including memory usage, processing speed, location error, and angular deviation per path length. Our proposed method achieves real-time frame stabilization at a practical frame rate of 30-40 frames per second (fps) in low-resource computing environments with horizontal and orientation errors.
Funding information in the publication:
Scientific Advisory Board for Defense, Finland, under the grant VN / 14863/2021-PLM-47