Depth Measurement with a Rotating Camera System for Robotic Applications

This chapter introduces an approach to measure depth using a single camera employing off-axis rotation. The camera is affixed to a rotational platform, aligning its optical axis parallel to the rotation axis. Visual parallax is achieved by circularly moving the camera, introducing a baseline offset and capturing images from various viewpoints. Stereo matching is applied to rectified image pairs based on camera calibration parameters. Depth computation follows, utilizing the resulting disparity map and image coplanar geometry. Given the acquisition of multi-view images through multiple camera rotation angles, this method mitigates correspondence mismatch in a multi-baseline stereo manner. Optical flow is additionally integrated to enhance depth accuracy. Experimental validation is conducted on images of static and dynamic scenes captured by a mobile robot, with preliminary results affirming the viability of the proposed technique.