Towards A Real Time Implementation Of The Marr And Poggio Stereo Matcher

This paper reports on research--primarily at Marr and Poggio's 9 mechanism level--to design a practical hardware stereo-matcher and on the interaction this study has had with our understanding of the problem, at the computational theory and algorithm levels. The stereo-matching algorithm proposed by Marr and Poggio 10 and implemented by Grimson and Marc 3 is consistent with what is presently known about human stereo vision 2. Their research has been concerned with understanding the principles underlying the stereo-matching problem. Our objective has been to produce a stereo-matcher that operates reliably at near real time rates as a tool to facilitate further research in vision and for possible application in robotics and stereo-photogrammetry. At present the design and construction of the camera and convolution modules of this project have been completed and the design of the zero-crossing and matching modules is progressing. The remainder of this section provides a brief description of the Marr and Poggio stereo algorithm. We then dis-cuss our general approach and sonic of the issues that have come up concerning the design of the individual modules.