PRiMEStereoMatch

Please use these citations in your publication if you use this work: (bibtex here)

Charles Leech, Charan Kumar, Amit Acharyya, Sheng Yang, Geoff V. Merrett, and Bashir M. Al-Hashimi. 2017. Runtime Performance and Power Optimization of Parallel Disparity Estimation on Many-Core Platforms. ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS) Volume 17 Issue 2, Article 41 (November 2017), 19 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3133560

Leech, Charles (2018) Runtime energy management of multi-core processors. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis, 293pp.

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Theoretical Background

A heterogeneous and fully parallel stereo matching algorithm for depth estimation. Stereo Matching is based on the disparity estimation algorithm, an algorithm designed to calculate 3D depth information about a scene from a pair of 2D images captured by a stereoscopic camera. The algorithm contains the following stages:

• Cost Volume Construction - weighted absolute difference of colours and gradients function.
• Cost Volume Filtering - Adaptive Support Weight (ADSW) Guided Image Filter (GIF) function.
• Disparity Selection - Winner-Takes-All (WTA) minimum cost selection.
• Post Processing - left-right occlusion check, invalid pixel replacement and weight-median filtering.

Implementation Details

• All stages of the algorithm have been developed in both C++ and OpenCL.
  • C++ parallelism is introduced via the POSIX threads (pthreads) library. Disparity level parallelism is supported, enabling up to 64 concurrent threads.
  • OpenCL parallelism is inherent through the concurrent execution of kernels on an OpenCL-compatible device. The optimum level of parallelism will be bounded by the platform & devices.
• Support for live video disparity estimation using the OpenCV VideoCapture interface as well as static image computation.
• Additional integration of the OpenCV Semi-Global Block Matching (SGBM) algorithm.

Installation

Prerequisites

• Hardware:
  • Development Platform - preferably including devices supporting OpenCL
  • Stereo Camera - to use the algorithm in video mode - the ZED Stereo Camera is used in our experimentation.
• Software Libraries:
  • OpenCV 3.0 or later - Installation in Linux instructions
  • pthread library for non-OpenCL execution on the CPU
  • OpenCL Library for execution on the GPU
  • cmake v3.2, git

Compilation

• Clone repo to the platform: git clone https://github.com/PRiME-project/PRiMEStereoMatch.git
• Enter the base directory: cd PRiMEStereoMatch/.
• Create a build directory: mkdir build
• Enter the build directory: cd build
• Invoke cmake to build the compilation files: cmake .. (Two dots are required in order to reference the base directory)
• Compile the project with the generated makefile: make -jN.
  • Set N to the number of simultaneous threads supported on your compilation platform, e.g. make -j8.

Deployment

• Run the application from the build dir: ./PRiMEStereoMatch <program arguments>

• The program mode is selected with git-style commands. Valid commands include:

  • video
    • [optional] When specifying the video mode, the following arguments can be included:
      • --recal - recalculate the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the stereo camera. Previously captured chessboard images must be supplied if the RECAPTURE flag is not also set.
      • --recap - record chessboard image pairs in preparation for calibration. A chessboard image must be presented in front of the stereo camera and in full view of both cameras. Press the R key to capture a frame. The last frame captured is shown beneath the video stream.
  • image
    • [optional] When specifying the image mode, the following arguments can be included:
      • -l [i]left image filename> -r right image filename
      • -gt ground truth filename

• A set of global options also exist, which must be specified for all modes:

  • -a (--alg=) - Set the default matching algorithm to run. It has options {STEREO_GIF, STEREO_SGBM}. This can also be toggled during executions.

• For example, to run using a stereo camera, specify:

  • ./PRiMEStereoMatch video

• To run with calibration and capture beforehand, specify:

  • ./PRiMEStereoMatch video --recal --recap

• Image disparity estimation is achieved using:

  • ./PRiMEStereoMatch image -l left_img.png -r right_img.png

• The first time the application is deployed using a stereo camera, the --recal and --recap flags must be set in order to capture chessboard image to calculate the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters.

• This process only needs to be repeated if the relative orientations of the left and right cameras are changed or a different resolution is specified.

• Once the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters have been calucalted and saved to .yml files, the application can be re-run with the same camera without needing to recalibrate as the parameters will be loaded from these files. The files can be found in the data directory.

Interactivity

• Press h to display a help menu on the command line. This shows input and control options for the program which change the way the algorithm behaves for the next frame.
• Control Options:
  • Matching Algorithm (a): STEREO_GIF or STEREO_SGBM
  • STEREO_GIF:
    • Numbers 1 - 8: (CPU only) change the number of simultaneous pthreads created
    • m: switch the computational mode between OpenCL (GPU) and pthreads (CPU)
    • t: switch the data type use for processing between 32-bit float and 8-bit char
  • STEREO_SGBM:
    • m: switch the computational mode between MODE_SGBM, MODE_HH and MODE_SGDM_3WAY

Directory Structure

folders:
	assets			- OpenCL kernel files
	data			- program data including input images, stereo camera parameters, calibration images
	docs			- images for the readme & wiki
	include			- Project header files (h/hpp)
	src			- Project source files (c/cpp)
	
files:
	CMakeLists.txt		- cmake project compilation file
	LICENCE.txt			- license file
	README.md			- this readme file

References

Code

Some components of the application are based on source code from the following locations:

rookiepig/CrossScaleStereo - The basis for some C++ functions (GNU Public License)

atilimcetin/guided-filter - CPU-based GIF implementation using the Fast Guided Filter (MIT License)

Literature

The algorithm in this work is based in parts on those presented in the following publications:

[Hosni2011CVPR]: C. Rhemann, A. Hosni, M. Bleyer, C. Rother, and M. Gelautz. Fast cost-volume filtering for visual correspondence and beyond. In CVPR, 2011

[Hosni2011ICME]: A. Hosni, M. Bleyer, C. Rhemann, M. Gelautz and C. Rother, Real-time local stereo matching using guided image filtering, in Multimedia and Expo (ICME), 2011 IEEE International Conference on, Barcelona, 2011.

[Ttofis2014]: C. Ttofis and T. Theocharides, High-quality real-time hardware stereo matching based on guided image filtering, in Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exhibition (DATE), Dresden, 2014.

[He2012]: K. He, J. Sun and X. Tang, Guided Image Filtering, Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on, pp. 1397-1409, 02 October 2012.

License

This software is released under the BSD 3 Clause License. See LICENSE.txt for details.

To cite this code in your work, please also include the following reference:

Charles Leech, Charan Kumar, Amit Acharyya, Sheng Yang, Geoff V. Merrett, and Bashir M. Al-Hashimi. 2017. Runtime Performance and Power Optimization of Parallel Disparity Estimation on Many-Core Platforms. ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS) Volume 17 Issue 2, Article 41 (November 2017), 19 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3133560

Bibtex:

@article{Leech:2017:RPP:3160927.3133560,
 author = {Leech, Charles and Kumar, Charan and Acharyya, Amit and Yang, Sheng and Merrett, Geoff V. and Al-Hashimi, Bashir M.},
 title = {Runtime Performance and Power Optimization of Parallel Disparity Estimation on Many-Core Platforms},
 journal = {ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS)},
 issue_date = {January 2018},
 volume = {17},
 number = {2},
 month = nov,
 year = {2017},
 issn = {1539-9087},
 pages = {41:1--41:19},
 articleno = {41},
 numpages = {19},
 url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3133560},
 doi = {10.1145/3133560},
 acmid = {3133560},
 publisher = {ACM},
 address = {New York, NY, USA},
 keywords = {Runtime management, computer vision, many-core platforms, power optimization},
}