2D Parallel Mosaics for Under-Vehicle Inspection
Project Status: Complete (Years: 2001 – 2002)
Research Description
The purpose of this research is to study methods and algorithms of video mosaicing for a vision system that will be able to inspect the undersides of vehicles. The system will create entire images of the vehicle undersides for both visual inspection and automatic comparison with previous images stored in a database. Since cameras are very close to the underside of a vehicle under inspection, each camera only covers a small portion of the underside. Thus a composite picture covering the entire under-vehicle will be created by mosaicing the images from a 2D “array of cameras”. Our approach for solving this problem is to use a line of cameras as a scanner. The system will continuously take images as the vehicle drives over, then mosaic all of those images into a single image used for inspection. The dense coverage of the vehicle bottom by camera images as the vehicle drives over allows for relatively easy mosaicing of the vehicle underside image. As a result of camera view overlap, we can also create multiple mosaics with pseudo-parallel projection representations that preserve the occlusion information from different viewing angles in favor of vehicle inspection. The algorithm design effort will focus on adapting the geo-registered mosaic methodology developed for the UMass environmental monitoring program to the problem of generating mosaics from a “virtual” bed of 2D camera array for under vehicle inspection. Challenging technical issues include (1) calibration of the 1D camera array; (2) estimation of the motion of the vehicle while creating the mosaics and (3) seamless mosaicing with 2D “array of cameras” with different viewpoints.
Sponsors
Atlantic Coast Technologies, Inc. (industrial subcontract), Under-Vehicle Inspection System (UVIS), 01/01/01-12/31/01, Co-PI: Z. Zhu