Close range three-dimensional position sensing using stereo matching with Hopfield neural networks.

In recent years Vision Systems have found their ways into many real-world applications. This includes such fields as surveillance and tracking, computer graphics and various factory settings such as assembly line inspection and object manipulation. The application of Computer Vision techniques to factory automation, Machine Vision, is a growing field. However in most Machine Vision systems an algorithm is needed to infer 3D information regarding the objects in the field of view. Such a task can be accomplished using a Stereo Vision algorithm. In this thesis a new Machine Vision Algorithm for Close-Range Position Sensing is presented where a Hopfield Neural Network is used for the Stereo Matching stage: stereo Matching is formulated as an energy minimization task which is accomplished using the Hopfield Neural Networks. Various other important aspects of this Vision System are discussed including camera calibration and objects localization. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-01, page: 0423. Thesis (M.A.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2006

A Stereovision Matching Strategy for Images Captured with Fish-Eye Lenses in Forest Environments

We present a novel strategy for computing disparity maps from hemispherical stereo images obtained with fish-eye lenses in forest environments. At a first segmentation stage, the method identifies textures of interest to be either matched or discarded. This is achieved by applying a pattern recognition strategy based on the combination of two classifiers: Fuzzy Clustering and Bayesian. At a second stage, a stereovision matching process is performed based on the application of four stereovision matching constraints: epipolar, similarity, uniqueness and smoothness. The epipolar constraint guides the process. The similarity and uniqueness are mapped through a decision making strategy based on a weighted fuzzy similarity approach, obtaining a disparity map. This map is later filtered through the Hopfield Neural Network framework by considering the smoothness constraint. The combination of the segmentation and stereovision matching approaches makes the main contribution. The method is compared against the usage of simple features and combined similarity matching strategies

ChiTransformer:Towards Reliable Stereo from Cues

Current stereo matching techniques are challenged by restricted searching space, occluded regions and sheer size. While single image depth estimation is spared from these challenges and can achieve satisfactory results with the extracted monocular cues, the lack of stereoscopic relationship renders the monocular prediction less reliable on its own, especially in highly dynamic or cluttered environments. To address these issues in both scenarios, we present an optic-chiasm-inspired self-supervised binocular depth estimation method, wherein a vision transformer (ViT) with gated positional cross-attention (GPCA) layers is designed to enable feature-sensitive pattern retrieval between views while retaining the extensive context information aggregated through self-attentions. Monocular cues from a single view are thereafter conditionally rectified by a blending layer with the retrieved pattern pairs. This crossover design is biologically analogous to the optic-chasma structure in the human visual system and hence the name, ChiTransformer. Our experiments show that this architecture yields substantial improvements over state-of-the-art self-supervised stereo approaches by 11%, and can be used on both rectilinear and non-rectilinear (e.g., fisheye) images.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, CVPR202

Stereo imaging based particle velocimeter

Three dimensional coordinates of an object are determined from it's two dimensional images for a class of points on the object. Two dimensional images are first filtered by a Laplacian of Gaussian (LOG) filter in order to detect a set of feature points on the object. The feature points on the left and the right images are then matched using a Hopfield type optimization network. The performance index of the Hopfield network contains both local and global properties of the images. Parallel computing in stereo matching can be achieved by the proposed methodology

Structural matching by discrete relaxation

This paper describes a Bayesian framework for performing relational graph matching by discrete relaxation. Our basic aim is to draw on this framework to provide a comparative evaluation of a number of contrasting approaches to relational matching. Broadly speaking there are two main aspects to this study. Firstly we locus on the issue of how relational inexactness may be quantified. We illustrate that several popular relational distance measures can be recovered as specific limiting cases of the Bayesian consistency measure. The second aspect of our comparison concerns the way in which structural inexactness is controlled. We investigate three different realizations ai the matching process which draw on contrasting control models. The main conclusion of our study is that the active process of graph-editing outperforms the alternatives in terms of its ability to effectively control a large population of contaminating clutter