High Dynamic Range Adaptive Real-time Smart Camera: an overview of the HDR-ARTiST project

International audienceStandard cameras capture only a fraction of the information that is visible to the human visual system. This is specifically true for natural scenes including areas of low and high illumination due to transitions between sunlit and shaded areas. When capturing such a scene, many cameras are unable to store the full Dynamic Range (DR) resulting in low quality video where details are concealed in shadows or washed out by sunlight. The imaging technique that can overcome this problem is called HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging. This paper describes a complete smart camera built around a standard off-the-shelf LDR (Low Dynamic Range) sensor and a Virtex-6 FPGA board. This smart camera called HDR-ARtiSt (High Dynamic Range Adaptive Real-time Smart camera) is able to produce a real-time HDR live video color stream by recording and combining multiple acquisitions of the same scene while varying the exposure time. This technique appears as one of the most appropriate and cheapest solution to enhance the dynamic range of real-life environments. HDR-ARtiSt embeds real-time multiple captures, HDR processing, data display and transfer of a HDR color video for a full sensor resolution (1280 1024 pixels) at 60 frames per second. The main contributions of this work are: (1) Multiple Exposure Control (MEC) dedicated to the smart image capture with alternating three exposure times that are dynamically evaluated from frame to frame, (2) Multi-streaming Memory Management Unit (MMMU) dedicated to the memory read/write operations of the three parallel video streams, corresponding to the different exposure times, (3) HRD creating by combining the video streams using a specific hardware version of the Devebecs technique, and (4) Global Tone Mapping (GTM) of the HDR scene for display on a standard LCD monitor

High dynamic range stereo vision for outdoor mobile robotics

We present a technique for high-dynamic range stereo for outdoor mobile robot applications. Stereo pairs are captured at a number of different exposures (exposure bracketing), and combined by projecting the 3D points into a common coordinate frame, and building a 3D occupancy map. We present experimental results for static scenes with constant and dynamic lighting as well as outdoor operation with variable and high contrast lighting conditions

Sistema de reconocimiento de acciones mediante cámaras con detección de profundidad

El campo de monitorización y reconocimiento de movimientos es el centro de muchas investigaciones, dadas sus múltiples aplicaciones. Mediante el estudio de los sistemas actuales pueden observarse limitaciones y otros aspectos de mejora. Es posible aplicar nuevas técnicas de forma que se haga uso de tecnología comercial actual para mejorar el rendimiento de dichos sistemas de reconocimiento. De esta forma, este trabajo presenta un estudio del estado del arte en la monitorización y reconocimiento mediante información de profundidad, en el que se destacan las fortalezas y debilidades de los paradigmas actuales. A partir de este análisis, se propone un esquema de reconocimiento con capacidad de mejorar los sistemas actuales. La implementación consiste en un ToolBox de MatLab® con distintas funcionalidades. Sobre este se realizan una serie de experimentos y se discuten los resultados obtenidos, de forma que pueda trazarse un plan para futuros desarrollos que hagan uso de este estudio.Departamento de Teoría de la Señal y Comunicaciones e Ingeniería TelemáticaMáster en Investigación en Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicacione

Nouvelle génération de systèmes de vision temps réel à grande dynamique

Cette thèse s intègre dans le cadre du projet européen EUREKA "High Dynamic Range - Low NoiseCMOS imagers", qui a pour but de développer de nouvelles approches de fabrication de capteursd images CMOS à haute performance. L objectif de la thèse est la conception d un système de visiontemps réel à grande gamme dynamique (HDR). L axe principal sera la reconstruction, en temps réelet à la cadence du capteur (60 images/sec), d une vidéo à grande dynamique sur une architecturede calcul embarquée.La plupart des capteurs actuels produisent une image numérique qui n est pas capable de reproduireles vraies échelles d intensités lumineuses du monde réel. De la même manière, les écrans, impri-mantes et afficheurs courants ne permettent pas la restitution effective d une gamme tonale étendue.L approche envisagée dans cette thèse est la capture multiple d images acquises avec des tempsd exposition différents permettant de palier les limites des dispositifs actuels.Afin de concevoir un système capable de s adapter temporellement aux conditions lumineuses,l étude d algorithmes dédiés à la grande dynamique, tels que les techniques d auto exposition, dereproduction de tons, en passant par la génération de cartes de radiances est réalisée. Le nouveausystème matériel de type "smart caméra" est capable de capturer, générer et restituer du contenu àgrande dynamique dans un contexte de parallélisation et de traitement des flux vidéos en temps réelThis thesis is a part of the EUREKA European project called "High Dynamic Range - Low NoiseCMOS imagers", which developped new approaches to design high performance CMOS sensors.The purpose of this thesis is to design a real-time high dynamic range (HDR) vision system. Themain focus will be the real-time video reconstruction at 60 frames/sec in an embedded architecture.Most of the sensors produce a digital image that is not able to reproduce the real world light inten-sities. Similarly, monitors, printers and current displays do not recover of a wide tonal range. Theapproach proposed in this thesis is multiple acquisitions, taken with different exposure times, to over-come the limitations of the standard devices.To temporally adapt the light conditions, the study of algorithms dedicated to the high dynamic rangetechniques is performed. Our new smart camera system is able to capture, generate and showcontent in a highly parallelizable context for a real time processingDIJON-BU Doc.électronique (212319901) / SudocSudocFranceF