22,063 research outputs found
A Parallel Algorithm for High-Speed Stereo Matching
The goal of stereo vision is the recovery of depth information from the relative lateral displacements in the positions of objects within a pair of images taken from slightly differing viewpoints. While recent stereo matching techniques have yielded improvements in reliability and speed, most of these algorithms fall short of the real-time stereo matching requirements for navigation systems, robot vision, machine inspection, and other areas computer vision where rapid response is critical. Traditionally, matching algorithms have achieved high speeds through algorithm simplification and/or relied on custom hardware. The objective of our work has been the develop of a robust high-speed stereo matcher by exploiting parallel algorithms executing on general purpose SIMD machines. Our approach is based on several existing techniques dealing with the classification and evaluation of matches, the application of ordering constraints, and relaxation-based matching. The techniques have bene integrated and reformulated in terms of parallel execution on a theoretical SIMD machine. An ideal machine topology for executing this parallel algorithm is identified through complexity analysis. Feasibility is demonstrated by implementation on a commercially available SIMD machine, and its performance compared with that of the idealized machine. Sample results are shown for real and synthetic stereo pairs
Acceleration of stereo-matching on multi-core CPU and GPU
This paper presents an accelerated version of a
dense stereo-correspondence algorithm for two different parallelism
enabled architectures, multi-core CPU and GPU. The
algorithm is part of the vision system developed for a binocular
robot-head in the context of the CloPeMa 1 research project.
This research project focuses on the conception of a new clothes
folding robot with real-time and high resolution requirements
for the vision system. The performance analysis shows that
the parallelised stereo-matching algorithm has been significantly
accelerated, maintaining 12x and 176x speed-up respectively
for multi-core CPU and GPU, compared with non-SIMD singlethread
CPU. To analyse the origin of the speed-up and gain
deeper understanding about the choice of the optimal hardware,
the algorithm was broken into key sub-tasks and the performance
was tested for four different hardware architectures
Real-Time Dense Stereo Matching With ELAS on FPGA Accelerated Embedded Devices
For many applications in low-power real-time robotics, stereo cameras are the
sensors of choice for depth perception as they are typically cheaper and more
versatile than their active counterparts. Their biggest drawback, however, is
that they do not directly sense depth maps; instead, these must be estimated
through data-intensive processes. Therefore, appropriate algorithm selection
plays an important role in achieving the desired performance characteristics.
Motivated by applications in space and mobile robotics, we implement and
evaluate a FPGA-accelerated adaptation of the ELAS algorithm. Despite offering
one of the best trade-offs between efficiency and accuracy, ELAS has only been
shown to run at 1.5-3 fps on a high-end CPU. Our system preserves all
intriguing properties of the original algorithm, such as the slanted plane
priors, but can achieve a frame rate of 47fps whilst consuming under 4W of
power. Unlike previous FPGA based designs, we take advantage of both components
on the CPU/FPGA System-on-Chip to showcase the strategy necessary to accelerate
more complex and computationally diverse algorithms for such low power,
real-time systems.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, 2 table
A generic implementation framework for stereo matching algorithms
Traditional area-based matching techniques make use of similarity metrics such as the Sum of Absolute Differences(SAD), Sum of Squared Differences (SSD) and Normalised Cross Correlation (NCC). Non-parametric matching algorithms such as the rank and census rely on the relative ordering of pixel values rather than the pixels themselves as a similarity measure. Both traditional area-based and non-parametric stereo matching techniques have an algorithmic structure which is amenable to fast hardware realisation. This investigation undertakes a performance assessment of these two families of algorithms for robustness to radiometric distortion and random noise. A generic implementation framework is presented for the stereo matching problem and the relative hardware requirements for the various metrics investigated
Stereo Matching in Address-Event-Representation (AER) Bio-Inspired Binocular Systems in a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)
In stereo-vision processing, the image-matching step is essential for results, although it
involves a very high computational cost. Moreover, the more information is processed, the more time
is spent by the matching algorithm, and the more ine cient it is. Spike-based processing is a relatively
new approach that implements processing methods by manipulating spikes one by one at the time
they are transmitted, like a human brain. The mammal nervous system can solve much more complex
problems, such as visual recognition by manipulating neuron spikes. The spike-based philosophy
for visual information processing based on the neuro-inspired address-event-representation (AER)
is currently achieving very high performance. The aim of this work was to study the viability of a
matching mechanism in stereo-vision systems, using AER codification and its implementation in
a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Some studies have been done before in an AER system
with monitored data using a computer; however, this kind of mechanism has not been implemented
directly on hardware. To this end, an epipolar geometry basis applied to AER systems was studied
and implemented, with other restrictions, in order to achieve good results in a real-time scenario.
The results and conclusions are shown, and the viability of its implementation is proven.Ministerio de EconomĂa y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-
Depth from Monocular Images using a Semi-Parallel Deep Neural Network (SPDNN) Hybrid Architecture
Deep neural networks are applied to a wide range of problems in recent years.
In this work, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is applied to the problem of
determining the depth from a single camera image (monocular depth). Eight
different networks are designed to perform depth estimation, each of them
suitable for a feature level. Networks with different pooling sizes determine
different feature levels. After designing a set of networks, these models may
be combined into a single network topology using graph optimization techniques.
This "Semi Parallel Deep Neural Network (SPDNN)" eliminates duplicated common
network layers, and can be further optimized by retraining to achieve an
improved model compared to the individual topologies. In this study, four SPDNN
models are trained and have been evaluated at 2 stages on the KITTI dataset.
The ground truth images in the first part of the experiment are provided by the
benchmark, and for the second part, the ground truth images are the depth map
results from applying a state-of-the-art stereo matching method. The results of
this evaluation demonstrate that using post-processing techniques to refine the
target of the network increases the accuracy of depth estimation on individual
mono images. The second evaluation shows that using segmentation data alongside
the original data as the input can improve the depth estimation results to a
point where performance is comparable with stereo depth estimation. The
computational time is also discussed in this study.Comment: 44 pages, 25 figure
High-Performance and Tunable Stereo Reconstruction
Traditional stereo algorithms have focused their efforts on reconstruction
quality and have largely avoided prioritizing for run time performance. Robots,
on the other hand, require quick maneuverability and effective computation to
observe its immediate environment and perform tasks within it. In this work, we
propose a high-performance and tunable stereo disparity estimation method, with
a peak frame-rate of 120Hz (VGA resolution, on a single CPU-thread), that can
potentially enable robots to quickly reconstruct their immediate surroundings
and maneuver at high-speeds. Our key contribution is a disparity estimation
algorithm that iteratively approximates the scene depth via a piece-wise planar
mesh from stereo imagery, with a fast depth validation step for semi-dense
reconstruction. The mesh is initially seeded with sparsely matched keypoints,
and is recursively tessellated and refined as needed (via a resampling stage),
to provide the desired stereo disparity accuracy. The inherent simplicity and
speed of our approach, with the ability to tune it to a desired reconstruction
quality and runtime performance makes it a compelling solution for applications
in high-speed vehicles.Comment: Accepted to International Conference on Robotics and Automation
(ICRA) 2016; 8 pages, 5 figure
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