Event-based stereo matching using semiglobal matching

Abstract

In this article, we focus on the problem of depth estimation from a stereo pair of event-based sensors. These sensors asynchronously capture pixel-level brightness changes information (events) instead of standard intensity images at a specified frame rate. So, these sensors provide sparse data at low latency and high temporal resolution over a wide intrascene dynamic range. However, new asynchronous, event-based processing algorithms are required to process the event streams. We propose a fully event-based stereo three-dimensional depth estimation algorithm inspired by semiglobal matching. Our algorithm considers the smoothness constraints between the nearby events to remove the ambiguous and wrong matches when only using the properties of a single event or local features. Experimental validation and comparison with several state-of-the-art, event-based stereo matching methods are provided on five different scenes of event-based stereo data sets. The results show that our method can operate well in an event-driven way and has higher estimation accuracy.