234 research outputs found
Pushbroom Stereo for High-Speed Navigation in Cluttered Environments
We present a novel stereo vision algorithm that is capable of obstacle
detection on a mobile-CPU processor at 120 frames per second. Our system
performs a subset of standard block-matching stereo processing, searching only
for obstacles at a single depth. By using an onboard IMU and state-estimator,
we can recover the position of obstacles at all other depths, building and
updating a full depth-map at framerate.
Here, we describe both the algorithm and our implementation on a high-speed,
small UAV, flying at over 20 MPH (9 m/s) close to obstacles. The system
requires no external sensing or computation and is, to the best of our
knowledge, the first high-framerate stereo detection system running onboard a
small UAV
A Framework for SAR-Optical Stereogrammetry over Urban Areas
Currently, numerous remote sensing satellites provide a huge volume of
diverse earth observation data. As these data show different features regarding
resolution, accuracy, coverage, and spectral imaging ability, fusion techniques
are required to integrate the different properties of each sensor and produce
useful information. For example, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data can be
fused with optical imagery to produce 3D information using stereogrammetric
methods. The main focus of this study is to investigate the possibility of
applying a stereogrammetry pipeline to very-high-resolution (VHR) SAR-optical
image pairs. For this purpose, the applicability of semi-global matching is
investigated in this unconventional multi-sensor setting. To support the image
matching by reducing the search space and accelerating the identification of
correct, reliable matches, the possibility of establishing an epipolarity
constraint for VHR SAR-optical image pairs is investigated as well. In
addition, it is shown that the absolute geolocation accuracy of VHR optical
imagery with respect to VHR SAR imagery such as provided by TerraSAR-X can be
improved by a multi-sensor block adjustment formulation based on rational
polynomial coefficients. Finally, the feasibility of generating point clouds
with a median accuracy of about 2m is demonstrated and confirms the potential
of 3D reconstruction from SAR-optical image pairs over urban areas.Comment: This is the pre-acceptance version, to read the final version, please
go to ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing on ScienceDirec
Influence of camera distortions on satellite image registration and change detection applications
Applications such as change detection and digital elevation model extraction from optical images require a rigorous modeling of the acquisition geometry. We show that the unrecorded satellite jitter during image acquisition, and the uncertainties on the CCD arrays geometry are the current major limiting factors for applications requiring high accuracy. These artifacts are identified and quantified on several optical satellites, i.e., SPOT, ASTER, QuickBird, and HiRISE
Open source tool for DSMs generation from high resolution optical satellite imagery. Development and testing of an OSSIM plug-in
The fully automatic generation of digital surface models (DSMs) is still an open research issue. From recent years, computer vision algorithms have been introduced in photogrammetry in order to exploit their capabilities and efficiency in three-dimensional modelling. In this article, a new tool for fully automatic DSMs generation from high resolution satellite optical imagery is presented. In particular, a new iterative approach in order to obtain the quasi-epipolar images from the original stereopairs has been defined and deployed. This approach is implemented in a new Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) named Digital Automatic Terrain Extractor (DATE) developed at the Geodesy and Geomatics Division, University of Rome âLa Sapienzaâ, and conceived as an Open Source Software Image Map (OSSIM) plug-in. DATE key features include: the epipolarity achievement in the object space, thanks to the images ground projection (Ground quasi-Epipolar Imagery (GrEI)) and the coarse-to-fine pyramidal scheme adopted; the use of computer vision algorithms in order to improve the processing efficiency and make the DSMs generation process fully automatic; the free and open source aspect of the developed code. The implemented plug-in was validated through two optical datasets, GeoEye-1 and the newest PlĂ©iades-high resolution (HR) imagery, on Trento (Northern Italy) test site. The DSMs, generated on the basis of the metadata rational polynomial coefficients only, without any ground control point, are compared to a reference lidar in areas with different land use/land cover and morphology. The results obtained thanks to the developed workflow are good in terms of statistical parameters (root mean square error around 5 m for GeoEye-1 and around 4 m for PlĂ©iades-HR imagery) and comparable with the results obtained through different software by other authors on the same test site, whereas in terms of efficiency DATE outperforms most of the available commercial software. These first achievements indicate good potential for the developed plug-in, which in a very near future will be also upgraded for synthetic aperture radar and tri-stereo optical imagery processing
Refined Equivalent Pinhole Model for Large-scale 3D Reconstruction from Spaceborne CCD Imagery
In this study, we present a large-scale earth surface reconstruction pipeline
for linear-array charge-coupled device (CCD) satellite imagery. While
mainstream satellite image-based reconstruction approaches perform
exceptionally well, the rational functional model (RFM) is subject to several
limitations. For example, the RFM has no rigorous physical interpretation and
differs significantly from the pinhole imaging model; hence, it cannot be
directly applied to learning-based 3D reconstruction networks and to more novel
reconstruction pipelines in computer vision. Hence, in this study, we introduce
a method in which the RFM is equivalent to the pinhole camera model (PCM),
meaning that the internal and external parameters of the pinhole camera are
used instead of the rational polynomial coefficient parameters. We then derive
an error formula for this equivalent pinhole model for the first time,
demonstrating the influence of the image size on the accuracy of the
reconstruction. In addition, we propose a polynomial image refinement model
that minimizes equivalent errors via the least squares method. The experiments
were conducted using four image datasets: WHU-TLC, DFC2019, ISPRS-ZY3, and GF7.
The results demonstrated that the reconstruction accuracy was proportional to
the image size. Our polynomial image refinement model significantly enhanced
the accuracy and completeness of the reconstruction, and achieved more
significant improvements for larger-scale images.Comment: 24 page
Real-time on-board obstacle avoidance for UAVs based on embedded stereo vision
In order to improve usability and safety, modern unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs) are equipped with sensors to monitor the environment, such as
laser-scanners and cameras. One important aspect in this monitoring process is
to detect obstacles in the flight path in order to avoid collisions. Since a
large number of consumer UAVs suffer from tight weight and power constraints,
our work focuses on obstacle avoidance based on a lightweight stereo camera
setup. We use disparity maps, which are computed from the camera images, to
locate obstacles and to automatically steer the UAV around them. For disparity
map computation we optimize the well-known semi-global matching (SGM) approach
for the deployment on an embedded FPGA. The disparity maps are then converted
into simpler representations, the so called U-/V-Maps, which are used for
obstacle detection. Obstacle avoidance is based on a reactive approach which
finds the shortest path around the obstacles as soon as they have a critical
distance to the UAV. One of the fundamental goals of our work was the reduction
of development costs by closing the gap between application development and
hardware optimization. Hence, we aimed at using high-level synthesis (HLS) for
porting our algorithms, which are written in C/C++, to the embedded FPGA. We
evaluated our implementation of the disparity estimation on the KITTI Stereo
2015 benchmark. The integrity of the overall realtime reactive obstacle
avoidance algorithm has been evaluated by using Hardware-in-the-Loop testing in
conjunction with two flight simulators.Comment: Accepted in the International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote
Sensing and Spatial Information Scienc
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