Bayer-Based Vision System: Image processing in an Incomplete Color-Space

While most imaging devices use the Bayer pattern, virtually all vision methods assume the availability of information for a complete color space. This creates the need for demosaicing step, for which even the fastest naïve interpolation is in some applications a computational burden. In this paper, a complete real-time vision infrastructure is built directly upon the Bayer pattern without interpolation. The specific application area is the vision subsystem for a small-sized soccer robots team, successfully attending world final games. However, the techniques are potentially applicable to other problem areas as well.