Unsure if this is the right place, but i wanted to ask about the operation of the Optical Tracking Odometry Sensor - PAA5160E1. I have done a bit of research into using optical sensors for tracking through optical flow and suspect this may be an avenue worth looking into for a project i am working on with tracking the surface of a hose within a reel as it is pulled out.
My question is can the data from the optical sensor (i.e. Position in x and Position in y) be sent through without the IMU data fusing with it? I imagine the STM chip is offering two functions, fusing the IMU data in addition to providing a level of isolation/security for the optical sensors operations. For this use case the breakout board would be stationary and the hose ran past it at 10mm offset, would this provide meaningful positional data or does the board outputs require data from the IMU?
Essentially i am looking to track position in +x, -x and then treat this as an encoder reading of sorts for how much hose length has been fed out.
Thanks.