Chromatic adaptation pre-filtering effect on visual based motion strategies

This paper analyzes the effects of the application of visual adaptation mechanisms on snapshot-based guidance methods. The guidance principle of the visual homing is proven to be a visual potential function with an equilibrium point located at the goal position. The presence of a potential function means that classical control theory principles based on the Lyapunov functions can be applied to assess the robustness of the navigation strategy. The proposed adaptation mechanism is the Retinex algorithm, a blind chromatic adaptation pre-filtering that performs color constancy with no apriori information about the illuminant. It increases the visual information similarity under changes in the illuminant, increasing the robustness of the visual guidance. Tests and comparisons are presented.