4WD Robot Posture Estimation by Radial Multi-View Visual Odometry

This chapter presents a four-wheel robot’s trajectory tracking model by an extended Kalman filter (EKF) estimator for visual odometry using a divergent trinocular visual sensor. The trinocular sensor is homemade and a specific observer model was developed to measure 3D key-points by combining multi-view cameras. The observer approaches a geometric model and the key-points are used as references for estimating the robot’s displacement. The robot’s displacement is estimated by triangulation of multiple pairs of environmental 3D key-points. The four-wheel drive (4WD) robot’s inverse/direct kinematic control law is combined with the visual observer, the visual odometry model, and the EKF. The robot’s control law is used to produce experimental locomotion statistical variances and is used as a prediction model in the EKF. The proposed dead-reckoning approach models the four asynchronous drives and the four damping suspensions. This chapter presents the deductions of models, formulations and their validation, as well as the experimental results on posture state estimation comparing the four-wheel dead-reckoning model, the visual observer, and the EKF with an external global positioning reference

Specialised global methods for binocular and trinocular stereo matching

The problem of estimating depth from two or more images is a fundamental problem in computer vision, which is commonly referred as to stereo matching. The applications of stereo matching range from 3D reconstruction to autonomous robot navigation. Stereo matching is particularly attractive for applications in real life because of its simplicity and low cost, especially compared to costly laser range finders/scanners, such as for the case of 3D reconstruction. However, stereo matching has its very unique problems like convergence issues in the optimisation methods, and challenges to find matches accurately due to changes in lighting conditions, occluded areas, noisy images, etc. It is precisely because of these challenges that stereo matching continues to be a very active field of research. In this thesis we develop a binocular stereo matching algorithm that works with rectified images (i.e. scan lines in two images are aligned) to find a real valued displacement (i.e. disparity) that best matches two pixels. To accomplish this our research has developed techniques to efficiently explore a 3D space, compare potential matches, and an inference algorithm to assign the optimal disparity to each pixel in the image. The proposed approach is also extended to the trinocular case. In particular, the trinocular extension deals with a binocular set of images captured at the same time and a third image displaced in time. This approach is referred as to t +1 trinocular stereo matching, and poses the challenge of recovering camera motion, which is addressed by a novel technique we call baseline recovery. We have extensively validated our binocular and trinocular algorithms using the well known KITTI and Middlebury data sets. The performance of our algorithms is consistent across different data sets, and its performance is among the top performers in the KITTI and Middlebury datasets. The time-stamped results of our algorithms as reported in this thesis can be found at: • LCU on Middlebury V2 (https://web.archive.org/web/20150106200339/http://vision.middlebury. edu/stereo/eval/). • LCU on Middlebury V3 (https://web.archive.org/web/20150510133811/http://vision.middlebury. edu/stereo/eval3/). • LPU on Middlebury V3 (https://web.archive.org/web/20161210064827/http://vision.middlebury. edu/stereo/eval3/). • LPU on KITTI 2012 (https://web.archive.org/web/20161106202908/http://cvlibs.net/datasets/ kitti/eval_stereo_flow.php?benchmark=stereo). • LPU on KITTI 2015 (https://web.archive.org/web/20161010184245/http://cvlibs.net/datasets/ kitti/eval_scene_flow.php?benchmark=stereo). • TBR on KITTI 2012 (https://web.archive.org/web/20161230052942/http://cvlibs.net/datasets/ kitti/eval_stereo_flow.php?benchmark=stereo)

On the Synergies between Machine Learning and Binocular Stereo for Depth Estimation from Images: a Survey

Stereo matching is one of the longest-standing problems in computer vision with close to 40 years of studies and research. Throughout the years the paradigm has shifted from local, pixel-level decision to various forms of discrete and continuous optimization to data-driven, learning-based methods. Recently, the rise of machine learning and the rapid proliferation of deep learning enhanced stereo matching with new exciting trends and applications unthinkable until a few years ago. Interestingly, the relationship between these two worlds is two-way. While machine, and especially deep, learning advanced the state-of-the-art in stereo matching, stereo itself enabled new ground-breaking methodologies such as self-supervised monocular depth estimation based on deep networks. In this paper, we review recent research in the field of learning-based depth estimation from single and binocular images highlighting the synergies, the successes achieved so far and the open challenges the community is going to face in the immediate future.Comment: Accepted to TPAMI. Paper version of our CVPR 2019 tutorial: "Learning-based depth estimation from stereo and monocular images: successes, limitations and future challenges" (https://sites.google.com/view/cvpr-2019-depth-from-image/home

3D-DCT based perceptual quality assessment of stereo video

ABSTRACT In this paper, we present a novel stereoscopic video quality assessment method based on 3D-DCT transform. In our approach, similar blocks from left and right views of stereoscopic video frames are found by block-matching, grouped into 3D stack and then analyzed by 3D-DCT. Comparison between reference and distorted images are made in terms of MSE calculated within the 3D-DCT domain and modified to reflect the contrast sensitive function and luminance masking. We validate our quality assessment method using test videos annotated with results from subjective tests. The results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms current popular metrics over a wide range of distortion levels

A Review and Analysis of Eye-Gaze Estimation Systems, Algorithms and Performance Evaluation Methods in Consumer Platforms

In this paper a review is presented of the research on eye gaze estimation techniques and applications, that has progressed in diverse ways over the past two decades. Several generic eye gaze use-cases are identified: desktop, TV, head-mounted, automotive and handheld devices. Analysis of the literature leads to the identification of several platform specific factors that influence gaze tracking accuracy. A key outcome from this review is the realization of a need to develop standardized methodologies for performance evaluation of gaze tracking systems and achieve consistency in their specification and comparative evaluation. To address this need, the concept of a methodological framework for practical evaluation of different gaze tracking systems is proposed.Comment: 25 pages, 13 figures, Accepted for publication in IEEE Access in July 201

Acquisition and Processing of ToF and Stereo data

Providing a computer the capability to estimate the three-dimensional geometry of a scene is a fundamental problem in computer vision. A classical systems that has been adopted for solving this problem is the so-called stereo vision system (stereo system). Such a system is constituted by a couple of cameras and it exploits the principle of triangulation in order to provide an estimate of the framed scene. In the last ten years, new devices based on the time-of-flight principle have been proposed in order to solve the same problem, i.e., matricial Time-of-Flight range cameras (ToF cameras). This thesis focuses on the analysis of the two systems (ToF and stereo cam- eras) from a theoretical and an experimental point of view. ToF cameras are introduced in Chapter 2 and stereo systems in Chapter 3. In particular, for the case of the ToF cameras, a new formal model that describes the acquisition process is derived and presented. In order to understand strengths and weaknesses of such different systems, a comparison methodology is introduced and explained in Chapter 4. From the analysis of ToF cameras and stereo systems it is possible to understand the complementarity of the two systems and it is intuitive to figure that a synergic fusion of their data might provide an improvement in the quality of the measurements preformed by the two devices. In Chapter 5 a method for fusing ToF and stereo data based on a probability approach is presented. In Chapter 6 a method that exploits color and three-dimensional geometry information for solving the classical problem of scene segmentation is explaine

Survey of computer vision algorithms and applications for unmanned aerial vehicles

This paper presents a complete review of computer vision algorithms and vision-based intelligent applications, that are developed in the field of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the latest decade. During this time, the evolution of relevant technologies for UAVs; such as component miniaturization, the increase of computational capabilities, and the evolution of computer vision techniques have allowed an important advance in the development of UAVs technologies and applications. Particularly, computer vision technologies integrated in UAVs allow to develop cutting-edge technologies to cope with aerial perception difficulties; such as visual navigation algorithms, obstacle detection and avoidance and aerial decision-making. All these expert technologies have developed a wide spectrum of application for UAVs, beyond the classic military and defense purposes. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Computer Vision are common topics in expert systems, so thanks to the recent advances in perception technologies, modern intelligent applications are developed to enhance autonomous UAV positioning, or automatic algorithms to avoid aerial collisions, among others. Then, the presented survey is based on artificial perception applications that represent important advances in the latest years in the expert system field related to the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. In this paper, the most significant advances in this field are presented, able to solve fundamental technical limitations; such as visual odometry, obstacle detection, mapping and localization, et cetera. Besides, they have been analyzed based on their capabilities and potential utility. Moreover, the applications and UAVs are divided and categorized according to different criteria.This research is supported by the Spanish Government through the CICYT projects (TRA2015-63708-R and TRA2013-48314-C3-1-R)