Bimodal Active Stereo Vision

We present a biologically inspired active vision system that incorporates two modes of perception. A peripheral mode provides a broad and coarse perception of where mass is in the scene in the vicinity of the current fixation point, and how that mass is moving. It involves fusion of actively acquired depth data into a 3D occupancy grid. A foveal mode then ensures coordinated stereo fixation upon mass/objects in the scene, and enables extraction of the mass/object using a maximum a-posterior probability zero disparity filter. Foveal processing is limited to the vicinity of the camera optical centres. Results for each mode and both modes operating in parallel are presented. The regime operates at approximately 15Hz on a 3GHz single processor PC.