Wide-baseline stereo experiments in natural terrain

We have developed a wide-baseline stereo vision technique for Mars rovers in order to map terrain distant from the rover and allow localization and navigation over large areas. This technique uses two images captured by the same camera at different rover positions as a virtual stereo pair. The larger baseline yields better accuracy for distant terrain, but makes stereo matching more difficult. In addition, calibration of the relative camera positions in advance is no longer possible and odometry errors result in uncertainty in the camera positions in practice. Our methodology addresses these problems. We have tested these techniques in several locations containing natural terrain (mostly desert). This paper describes the experiments and discusses the successes and failures of the wide-baseline stereo technique