Variational Fisheye Stereo

Dense 3D maps from wide-angle cameras is beneficial to robotics applications such as navigation and autonomous driving. In this work, we propose a real-time dense 3D mapping method for fisheye cameras without explicit rectification and undistortion. We extend the conventional variational stereo method by constraining the correspondence search along the epipolar curve using a trajectory field induced by camera motion. We also propose a fast way of generating the trajectory field without increasing the processing time compared to conventional rectified methods. With our implementation, we were able to achieve real-time processing using modern GPUs. Our results show the advantages of our nonrectified dense mapping approach compared to rectified variational methods and non-rectified discrete stereo matching methods.