Patent ID: 6507665
Filing Date: 2003-01-14
Classification: G06T,H04N

Abstract:
A method for generating a panoramic environment map from a plurality of stereo image pairs of a scene, said method comprising the steps of:(a) acquiring a plurality of stereo image pairs of the scene, wherein there is an overlap region between adjacent stereo image pairs; (b) generating orthographic range values from each of the stereo image pairs corresponding to the orthogonal distance of image features in the stereo pairs from an image capture point; (c) transforming the range values into transformed range values referenced to a coordinate system that reflects a common projection of the features from each stereo image pair; (d) warping the transformed range values onto a cylindrical surface, and forming therefrom a plurality of warped range images; (e) registering the adjacent warped range images; and (f) blending the overlap regions of the registered warped range images to generate a panoramic environment map containing range information.