A novel algorithm for distance measurement using stereo camera

Abstract

Distance estimation can be achieved by using active sensors or with the help of passive sensors such as cameras. The stereo vision system is generally composed of two cameras to mimic the human binocular vision. In this paper, a Python-based algorithm is proposed to find the parameters of each camera, rectify the images, create the disparity maps and finally use these maps for distance measurements. Experiments using real-time images, which were captured from our stereo vision system, of different obstacles positioned at multiple distances (60–200 cm) prove the effectiveness of the proposed program and show that the calculated distance to the obstacle is relatively accurate. The accuracy of distance measurement is up to 99.83%. The processing time needed to calculate the distance between the obstacle and the cameras is less than 0.355 s.