The United States of America As Represented by the Administrator of the

Rca Thomson Licensing Corp.

Charles H Anderson

Gooitzen Siemen Van Der Wal

Joseph O Sinniger

Larry H Matthies

First circuit apparatus, comprising a given number of prior-art image-pyramid stages, together with second circuit apparatus, comprising the same given number of novel motion-vector stages, perform cost-effective hierarchical motion analysis (HMA) in real time, with minimum system processing delay and/or employing minimum hardware structure. Specifically, the first and second circuit apparatus, in response to relatively high-resolution image data from an ongoing input series of successive given pixel-density image-data frames that occur at a relatively high frame rate (e.g., 30 frames per second), derives, after a certain processing-system delay, an ongoing output series of successive given pixel-density vector-data frames that occur at the same given frame rate. Each vector-data frame is indicative of image motion occurring between each pair of successive image frames.

Implementation architecture for performing hierarchical motion analysis

Apparatus and methods for near real-time stereo vision system for use with a robotic vehicle comprises two cameras mounted on three-axis rotation platforms, image-processing boards, a CPU, and specialized stereo vision algorithms. Bandpass-filtered image pyramids are computed, stereo matching is performed by least-squares correlation, and confidence ranges are estimated by means of Bayes' theorem. In particular, Laplacian image pyramids are built and disparity maps are produced from the 60.times.64 level of the pyramids at rates of up to 2 seconds per image pair. The first autonomous cross-country robotic traverses (of up to 100 meters) have been achieved using the stereo vision system of the present invention with all computing due aboard the vehicle. The overall approach disclosed herein provides a unifying paradigm for practical domain-independent stereo ranging.

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La Canada, CA, United States of America

Charles H Anderson