An FPGA-Based Real-Time System for 3D Stereo Matching, Combining Absolute Differences and Census with Aggregation and Belief Propagation

Abstract. The implementation of 3D stereo matching in real time is an important problem for many vision applications and algorithms. The current work, extending previous results by the same authors, presents in detail an architecture which combines the methods of Absolute Differ-ences, Census, and Belief Propagation in an integrated architecture suit-able for implementation with Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) logic. Emphasis on the present work is placed on the justification of di-mensioning the system, as well as detailed design and testing information for a fully placed and routed design to process 87 frames per sec (fps) in 1920 × 1200 resolution, and a fully implemented design for 400 × 320 which runs up to 1570 fps