Optical Flow Tracking, Help!

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by falconmaster

Assuming we are a a given height, above the pool bottom, we want to use the same type of program that a mouse uses to track a table top for us to basically have our auv be the mouse in the pool and for us to able to tell what direction and how fast we are traveling.

I am unclear on what you are entirely asking.
Are you saying this device will be kept at a given fixed height in the pool or that this device will need to use the bottom of the pool to put itself at a certain height from the bottom of the pool?

If your intent is to put yourself a fixed height from the bottom of the pool you would be much better off using sonar not video for that purpose.
The depth measurement is much easier to achieve with sonar (a Doppler technology).
In this case though you are moving perpendicular to the plane of measurement so it will be much easier and cheaper.

As far as tracking the pattern on the floor for X/Y movement the technology used by optical mice is DIC / DDIT and it is derived in part from military technology.

What is the resolution of your camera and what do you have to process the image?
Start with Moire, MatLab and Mathematica.