Robust motion estimation on a low-power multi-core DSP

This paper addresses the efficient implementation of a robust gradient-based optical flow model in a low-power platform based on a multi-core digital signal processor (DSP). The aim of this work was to carry out a feasibility study on the use of these devices in autonomous systems such as robot navigation, biomedical assistance, or tracking, with not only power restrictions but also real-time requirements. We consider the C6678 DSP from Texas Instruments (Dallas, TX, USA) as the target platform of our implementation. The interest of this research is particularly relevant in optical flow scope because this system can be considered as an alternative solution for mid-range video resolutions when a combination of in-processor parallelism with optimizations such as efficient memory-hierarchy exploitation and multi-processor parallelization are applied.