Fusing Binocular and Monocular Depth Cues

Abstract

In this chapter we develop a technique for strong coupling of modules. As explained in chapter 4, strong coupling occurs when one module interacts during the computation of another. For example if the modules are stereo and eye-movements, then the eye-movements directly affect the matching of the stereo process. We will primarily concentrate on methods for strongly coupling stereo with monocular cues. The formalism, however, is more general and can be directly adapted to other matching problems such as long range motion correspondence. It will be shown that the theory for stereo integration of different features that described in the previous chapter can be naturally extended to incorporate these additional cues. Again methods from statistical mechanics, or statistics, can be applied to impose the matching constraints in a “strong” manner.