Trinocular divergent stereo vision

This paper presents a new camera arrangement for an autonomous vehicle. This system consists of three cameras: two cameras with divergent optical axes and 4-mm wide angle lenses provide the system with an overview of the traffic scene, and a third camera with a 16-mm telelens is used to obtain more detailed information in the central field of view. In order to achieve active vision, all cameras are mounted on a pan and tilt platform, so that they can be pointed in azimuth and elevation. Two different camera models are developed and their parameters determined in an off-line automatic calibration process. Since the fields of view of the three cameras overlap, stereo triangulation is possible. A feature based approach using position trees helps to solve the correspondence problem in real time