A Platform-Based SoC Design for Real-Time Stereo Vision

A stereo vision is able to build three-dimensional maps of its environment. It can provide much more complete information than a 2D image based vision but has to process, at least, that much more data. In the past decade, real-time stereo has become a reality. Some solutions are based on reconfigurable hardware and others rely on specialized hardware. However, they are designed for their own specific applications and are difficult to extend their functionalities. This paper describes a vision system based on a System on a Chip ( SoC) platform. A real-time stereo image correlator is implemented using Sum of Absolute Difference ( SAD) algorithm and is integrated into the vision system using AMBA bus protocol. Since the system is designed on a pre-verified platform it can be easily extended in its functionality increasing design productivity. Simulation results show that the vision system is suitable for various real-time applications