Attenuating stereo pixel-locking via affine window adaptation

For real-time stereo vision systems, the standard method for estimating sub-pixel stereo disparity given an initial integer disparity map involves fitting parabolas to a matching cost function aggregated over rectangular windows. This results in a phenomenon known as pixel-locking, which produces artificially-peaked histograms of sub-pixel disparity. These peaks correspond to the introduction of erroneous ripples or waves in the 3D reconstruction of truly flat surfaces. Since stereo vision is a common input modality for autonomous vehicles, these inaccuracies can pose a problem for safe, reliable navigation. This paper proposes a new method for sub-pixel stereo disparity estimation, based on ideas from Lucas-Kanade tracking and optical flow, which substantially reduces the pixel-locking effect. In addition, it has the ability to correct much larger initial disparity errors than previous approaches and is more general as it applies not only to the ground plane. We demonstrate the method on synthetic imagery as well as real stereo data from an autonomous outdoor vehicle