A Scalable High-Performance Hardware Architecture for Real-Time Stereo Vision by Semi-Global Matching

Perceiving distance from two camera images, a task called stereo vision, is fundamental for many applications in robotics or automation. However, algorithms that compute this information at high accuracy have a high computational complexity. One such algorithm, Semi Global Matching (SGM), performs well in many stereo vision benchmarks, while maintaining a manageable computational complexity. Nevertheless, CPU and GPU implementations of this algorithm often fail to achieve real-time processing of camera images, especially in power-constrained embedded environments. This work presents a novel architecture to calculate disparities through SGM. The proposed architecture is highly scalable and applicable for low-power embedded as well as high-performance multicamera high-resolution applications.