DYNAMIC EDGE WARPING - AN EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEM FOR RECOVERING DISPARITY MAPS IN WEAKLY CONSTRAINED SYSTEMS

A new technique called dynamic edge warping (DEW), for recovering reasonably accurate disparity maps from uncalibrated stereo image pairs, is presented. That is, no precise knowledge of the epipolar camera geometry is assumed. The technique is embedded in a system including structural stereopsis on the front end and robust estimation in digital photogrammetry on the other for the purpose of self-calibrating stereo image pairs. Once the relative camera orientation is known, the epipolar geometry is computed and the system may use this information to refine its representation of the object space. Such a system will find application in the autonomous extraction of terrian maps from stereo aerial photographs, for which camera position and orientation are unknown a priori, and for on-line autonomous calibration maintenance for robotic vision applications, in which the cameras are subject to vibration and other physical disturbances after calibration. This work thus forms a component of an intelligent system that begins with a pair of images and, having only vague knowledge of the conditions under which they were acquired, produces an accurate, dense, relative depth map. The resulting disparity map may also be used directly in some high-level applications involving qualitative scene analysis, spatial reasoning, and perceptual organization of the object space. The system as a whole substitutes high-level information and constraints f precise geometric knowledge in driving and constraining the early correspondence process.