A dedicated lightweight binocular stereo system for real-time depth-map generation

Abstract

This work describes a light weight dedicated system, capable of generating a sequence of depth-maps computed from image streams acquired from a synchronized pair of GoPro HERO 3+ cameras in real-time. The envisioned purpose is to capture depth-maps from mid-sized drones for computer vision applications (e.g. surveillance and management of ecosystems). The implementation is of modular design, consisting of a dedicated camera synchronisation box, fast lookup based rectification system, a block matching based dense correspondence finder that uses dynamic programming, and a simple disparity-to-depth conversion module. The final output is transmitted to a server via WIFIor G4 LTE cellular Internet connection for further processing. The complete pipeline is implemented on an Android tablet. The main novelty is the system's ability to operate on small portable devices while retaining reasonable quality and real-time performance for outdoor applications. Our experimental results in estuary, forestry and dairy farming environment support this claim.