Large-scale scene reconstruction using periscopic stereo

Most of the existing work on three-dimensional scene reconstruction from imagery has concentrated on individual scenes or objects. Large-scale reconstruction of the surrounding scene is limited by the problems of "where to look next" and the resolution of structure parallel to the stereo baseline. Periscopic stereo is a largely forgotten concept which is able to solve both by virtue of its unique imaging geometry and the appropriate application of image processing and computer vision techniques. This paper discusses the large-scale reconstruction of the surrounding scene with applications to remote exploration by autonomous robotic vehicles.