Stereo vision using two PTZ cameras

The research of traditional stereo vision is mainly based on static cameras. As PTZ (Pan–Tilt–Zoom) cameras are able to obtain multi-view-angle and multi-resolution information, they have received more and more concern in both research and real application. Stereo vision using dual-PTZ-camera system, compared with using dual-static-camera system, is much more challenging. Dual-PTZ-camera system could have more extensive scope of application by combining the merits of PTZ-camera. However, few works about stereo vision with dual-PTZ-camera system were found in literature. In this paper, we propose a novel stereo rectification method for dual-PTZ-camera system, which is essential to greatly increase the efficiency of stereo matching. In dual-PTZ-camera system, the inconsistence of intensities in two camera images, which is caused by camera’s self-adjustment of intensity under different illumination condition with different view fields, is also a challenge in stereo matching. In order to deal with this problem, we propose a two-step based stereo matching strategy. Experimental results show that our approach works well.