High-Precision Range Estimation from an Omnidirectional Stereo System

Abstract

This paper presents the estimation of depth based on the cylindrical re-projection of images captured by a stereo setup of ODV (OmniDirectional Vision). In general, images obtained by such a device have relatively low spatial resolution and have some aberration in comparison to standard camera images and thus, considerable range estimation errors are caused. We propose a stereo setup of ODV, which features two mirrors with the original curvature to minimize blurring influence. We also propose an edge-based intensity interpolation method to improve the spatial resolution of the developed image. The bidirectional subpixel matching procedure and the discontinuity compensation algorithm are also presented to improve the quality of the range estimation. The experimental result reveals that the proposed ODSV (OmniDirectional Stereo Vision system) can successfully contribute to reduce disparity error and has subpixel range estimation accuracy even in the cluttered outdoor environment.