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IJAT Vol.20 No.5 pp. 491-502
(2026)

Research Paper:

Moving Object Detection from Moving Camera Using Focus of Expansion Likelihood and Segmentation

Masahiro Ogawa*,† ORCID Icon, Qi An** ORCID Icon, and Atsushi Yamashita** ORCID Icon

*Department of Precision Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

Corresponding author

**Department of Human and Engineered Environmental Studies, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo
Kashiwa, Japan

Received:
April 10, 2026
Accepted:
June 29, 2026
Published:
September 5, 2026
Keywords:
computer vision for automation, deep learning for visual perception, recognition, moving object detection, focus of expansion
Abstract

Separating moving and static objects from a moving camera viewpoint is essential for 3D reconstruction, autonomous navigation, and scene understanding in robotics. Existing approaches often rely primarily on optical flow, which struggles to detect moving objects in complex, structured scenes involving camera motion. To address this limitation, we propose Focus of Expansion Likelihood and Segmentation (FoELS), a method based on the core idea of integrating both optical flow and texture information. FoELS computes the focus of expansion (FoE) from optical flow and derives an initial motion likelihood from the outliers of the FoE computation. This likelihood is then fused with a segmentation-based prior to estimate the final moving probability. The method effectively handles challenges including complex structured scenes, rotational camera motion, and parallel motion. Comprehensive evaluations on the DAVIS 2016 and FBMS-59 datasets, along with real-world traffic videos including parallel, cross-direction, opposite-direction, and crowded scenes, demonstrate its effectiveness and state-of-the-art performance.

Sample result of FoELS (our method)

Sample result of FoELS (our method)

Cite this article as:
M. Ogawa, Q. An, and A. Yamashita, “Moving Object Detection from Moving Camera Using Focus of Expansion Likelihood and Segmentation,” Int. J. Automation Technol., Vol.20 No.5, pp. 491-502, 2026.
Data files:
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Last updated on Sep. 04, 2026