SSD Disparity Estimation for Dynamic Stereo

We analyse experimentally some subpixel-accuracy disparity and uncertainty estimators based on the SSD method, frequently used in stereo and motion analysis. We identify key inadequacies, and introduce new, practical algorithms. We discuss results and performance tests, and demonstrate the effective use of the new estimators in a complete, working system reconstructing dense depth maps using dynamic stereo. The system achieves good accuracy (average percentage errors smaller than few percents) and reliable uncertainty discrimination without any expensive smoothing or regularisation of disparity maps, adopted commonly. 1 Introduction This paper analyses the estimation of subpixel-accuracy disparity and its uncertainty in the context of dynamic stereo for computing dense depth maps [3, 4, 7, 9, 10]. Careful solutions to this problem, supported by adequate solutions to resampling and drop ins/outs, allow us to achieve good reconstructions without expensive smoothing or regulari..