Logarithmic Image Sensor for Wide Dynamic Range Stereo Vision System

Stereo vision is the most universal way to get 3D information passively. The fast progress of digital image processing hardware makes this computation approach realizable now. It is well known that stereo vision matches 2 or more images of a scene, taken by image sensors from different points of view. Any information loss, even partially in those images, will drastically reduce the precision and reliability of this approach. In this paper, we introduce a stereo vision system designed for depth sensing that relies on logarithmic image sensor technology. The hardware is based on dual logarithmic sensors controlled and synchronized at pixel level. This dual sensor module provides high quality contrast indexed images of a scene. This contrast indexed sensing capability can be conserved over more than 140dB without any explicit sensor control and without delay. It can accommodate not only highly non-uniform illumination, specular reflections but also fast temporal illumination changes.