1,312 research outputs found
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
RSGM: Real-time Raster-Respecting Semi-Global Matching for Power-Constrained Systems
Stereo depth estimation is used for many computer vision applications. Though
many popular methods strive solely for depth quality, for real-time mobile
applications (e.g. prosthetic glasses or micro-UAVs), speed and power
efficiency are equally, if not more, important. Many real-world systems rely on
Semi-Global Matching (SGM) to achieve a good accuracy vs. speed balance, but
power efficiency is hard to achieve with conventional hardware, making the use
of embedded devices such as FPGAs attractive for low-power applications.
However, the full SGM algorithm is ill-suited to deployment on FPGAs, and so
most FPGA variants of it are partial, at the expense of accuracy. In a non-FPGA
context, the accuracy of SGM has been improved by More Global Matching (MGM),
which also helps tackle the streaking artifacts that afflict SGM. In this
paper, we propose a novel, resource-efficient method that is inspired by MGM's
techniques for improving depth quality, but which can be implemented to run in
real time on a low-power FPGA. Through evaluation on multiple datasets (KITTI
and Middlebury), we show that in comparison to other real-time capable stereo
approaches, we can achieve a state-of-the-art balance between accuracy, power
efficiency and speed, making our approach highly desirable for use in real-time
systems with limited power.Comment: Accepted in FPT 2018 as Oral presentation, 8 pages, 6 figures, 4
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
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
Bio-Inspired Stereo Vision Calibration for Dynamic Vision Sensors
Many advances have been made in the eld of computer vision. Several recent research trends
have focused on mimicking human vision by using a stereo vision system. In multi-camera systems, a
calibration process is usually implemented to improve the results accuracy. However, these systems generate
a large amount of data to be processed; therefore, a powerful computer is required and, in many cases,
this cannot be done in real time. Neuromorphic Engineering attempts to create bio-inspired systems that
mimic the information processing that takes place in the human brain. This information is encoded using
pulses (or spikes) and the generated systems are much simpler (in computational operations and resources),
which allows them to perform similar tasks with much lower power consumption, thus these processes
can be developed over specialized hardware with real-time processing. In this work, a bio-inspired stereovision
system is presented, where a calibration mechanism for this system is implemented and evaluated
using several tests. The result is a novel calibration technique for a neuromorphic stereo vision system,
implemented over specialized hardware (FPGA - Field-Programmable Gate Array), which allows obtaining
reduced latencies on hardware implementation for stand-alone systems, and working in real time.Ministerio de EconomĂa y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-PMinisterio de EconomĂa y Competitividad TIN2016-80644-
On the AER Stereo-Vision Processing: A Spike Approach to Epipolar Matching
Image processing in digital computer systems usually considers
visual information as a sequence of frames. These frames are from cameras that
capture reality for a short period of time. They are renewed and transmitted at a
rate of 25-30 fps (typical real-time scenario). Digital video processing has to
process each frame in order to detect a feature on the input. In stereo vision,
existing algorithms use frames from two digital cameras and process them pixel
by pixel until it finds a pattern match in a section of both stereo frames. To
process stereo vision information, an image matching process is essential, but it
needs very high computational cost. Moreover, as more information is
processed, the more time spent by the matching algorithm, the more inefficient
it is. Spike-based processing is a relatively new approach that implements
processing by manipulating spikes one by one at the time they are transmitted,
like a human brain. The mammal nervous system is able to solve much more
complex problems, such as visual recognition by manipulating neuronâs spikes.
The spike-based philosophy for visual information processing based on the
neuro-inspired Address-Event- Representation (AER) is achieving nowadays
very high performances. The aim of this work is to study the viability of a
matching mechanism in a stereo-vision system, using AER codification. This
kind of mechanism has not been done before to an AER system. To do that,
epipolar geometry basis applied to AER system are studied, and several tests
are run, using recorded data and a computer. The results and an average error
are shown (error less than 2 pixels per point); and the viability is proved
Order statistic filters for image matching
The rank and census are two filters based on order statistics which have been applied to the image matching problem for stereo pairs. Advantages of these filters include their robustness to radiometric distortion and small amounts of random noise, and their amenability to hardware implementation. In this paper, a new matching algorithm is presented, which provides an overall framework for matching, and is used to compare the rank and census techniques with standard matching metrics. The algorithm was tested using both real stereo pairs and a synthetic pair with ground truth. The rank and census filters were shown to significantly improve performance in the case of radiometric distortion. In all cases, the results obtained were comparable to, if not better than, those obtained using standard matching metrics. Furthermore, the rank and census have the additional advantage that their computational overhead is less than these metrics. For all techniques tested, the difference between the results obtained for the synthetic stereo pair, and the ground truth results was small
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