Variable-resolution motion stereo using reciprocal-wedge transform

The reciprocal-wedge transform (RWT) facilitates space-variant sensing which enables effective use of variable-resolution data and the reduction of total amount of the sensory data. The paper presents a motion stereo algorithm that exploits the important properties of the RWT, i.e., the anisotropic variable resolution and the preservation of linear features. It is shown that the RWT is suitable for the correspondence process in motion stereo which deals with disparities of corresponding features along epipolar lines. Multiple frames of motion stereo images are employed to improve precision and error rate of the depth recovery. The RWT is applied in both space and time domains to transform the x-t epipolar plane in ordinary motion stereo images into a ω-τ plane in RWT motion stereo images. The correspondence problem in variable-resolution motion stereo is reduced to a simpler problem of extracting collinear points in the ω-τ plane. A voting algorithm for accumulating multiple evidence is developed. The proposed method is potentially applicable to active sensing for autonomous road vehicle navigation, airport runway surveillance, etc. Preliminary experimental results are demonstrated