Real-time monocular depth mapping system using variance of focal plane and pixel focus measure

Vision is one of the most powerful senses available to creatures. Undoubtedly, many of the fundamental operations of humans, such as the ability to plan paths, avoid obstacles, and recognize objects, depend heavily on their visual perception of the world around them. Although humans have naturally evolved to efficiently use their stereo optical prowess to develop an understanding of their environment, artificial machines and systems in comparison have just begun to utilize computer vision to create awareness of local physical entities. One of the most important sensory skills creatures have is depth perception, which allows them to estimate the relative distance of objects in their vision from many visual cues. Many systems have been developed to aid machines in perceiving the depth map of their environment, and each system has its drawbacks and benefits. In this paper, we introduce the design and implementation of a new system which provides a depth map from the use of a single optical camera with focal plane variation in the images taken. The paper focuses on the methods used to scale the depth from focus algorithm to perform in real-time. The results also showcase a real-time depth mapping system capable of providing rich depth maps of scenes at a high framerate and with advanced noise filtration techniques.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Paerhati, Paruku

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kamal Youcef-Toumi.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113117

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/113117