Depth-Enhanced Panoramic Image Stitching for Real-Time Longwall Face Monitoring

This article presents a novel panoramic stitching solution for real-time monitoring of longwall mining faces, addressing significant parallax issues inherent in underground environments. Using a depth camera array and leveraging a local point cloud registration method, our method enhances real-time monitoring, ensuring precise scene alignment measurement and object placement in dynamic environments. Furthermore, we introduce depth completion to resolve issues related to incomplete depth data and propose a scan projection method to maintain image integrity in constrained, tunnel-like spaces. Our system has been validated in both real and simulated environments. The experimental results demonstrate superior performance compared to existing state-of-the-art methods, with an operational speed of 25 fps.