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2.1 Introduction

Towards the end of 1998 some informal, preliminary experiments with stereo vision were carried out. The experiments were performed with off-the-shelf components (in terms of the hardware and software) with some glue constructed in software to hold the interoperating systems together. The results of the experiments showed promise for the stereovisual techniques that this project aims for, and an indication of the project's feasibility. The results also served to highlight the most highly anticipated areas of difficulty.

The experiments involved taking still stereo images (that is, stereo versions of standard still photographs), and then displaying them in stereo mode on the computer. While this has a significantly smaller domain to that posed by this system, this simplification has the advantage that preliminary results could be obtained very quickly. Software was sourced to take the images and to subsequently display them in stereo mode, and small shell scripts constructed to glue the various utilities together. The result was a small system that could take two still images on different computers almost simultaneously and then display them in stereo mode.



Kevin Pulo
2000-08-22