Motion is a fundamental and useful property for machine vision. However, motion measurement by the digital processing of video camera images regaines enormous costs. We have developed a technology to realize a compact and low-cost visual sensor which robustly detects the direction and velocity of motion on a focal plane over a wide brightness range at high speed with a newly devised motion detection method. We have developed the prototype of a motion measurement smart visual sensor whose resolution is 10 × 2. The sensor is composed of a lens and a single-chip VLSI which was fabricated using a standard 1.5 micron CMOS process. As a result of the performance evaluation, it was confirmed that the prototype sensor can detect motion direction and velocity up to an on-chip image velocity of 100 mm/s with a response time of 10 ms under an illuminance range between 200 lux and 100,000 lux. In addition, the effectiveness of the visual sensor was shown during an experiment using actual vehicle detection under outdoor conditions.