A Real-Time Infrared Stereo Matching Algorithm for RGB-D Cameras' Indoor 3D Perception

Low-cost, commercial RGB-D cameras have become one of the main sensors for indoor scene 3D perception and robot navigation and localization. In these studies, the Intel RealSense R200 sensor (R200) is popular among many researchers, but its integrated commercial stereo matching algorithm has a small detection range, short measurement distance and low depth map resolution, which severely restrict its usage scenarios and service life. For these problems, on the basis of the existing research, a novel infrared stereo matching algorithm that combines the idea of the semi-global method and sliding window is proposed in this paper. First, the R200 is calibrated. Then, through Gaussian filtering, the mutual information and correlation between the left and right stereo infrared images are enhanced. According to mutual information, the dynamic threshold selection in matching is realized, so the adaptability to different scenes is improved. Meanwhile, the robustness of the algorithm is improved by the Sobel operators in the cost calculation of the energy function. In addition, the accuracy and quality of disparity values are improved through a uniqueness test and sub-pixel interpolation. Finally, the BundleFusion algorithm is used to reconstruct indoor 3D surface models in different scenarios, which proved the effectiveness and superiority of the stereo matching algorithm proposed in this paper.