Auto-Exposure Control Method for a Stereo Camera Robust to Brightness Variation

Abstract

This paper proposes an AE (Auto-Exposure) control method for stereo cameras. Image processing has a problem that it shows different performance depending on brightness values even with the same image processing algorithm. Auto-exposure control solves this problem by maintaining the brightness value of the acquired image. If preprocessing maintains the brightness value of the acquired image in a stereo camera, the performance of the image-processing algorithm becomes more stable. Traditional Auto-exposure control methods change the average brightness value of the image to attain the desired brightness value. However, this method is a disadvantageous in that it responds sensitively to exterior lighting sources and incurs low resource efficiency. The proposed method uses Gaussian sampling, with more sampling in the center region such that the sensitivity to light from exterior areas decreases and the resource efficiency improves. In experiments we confirmed that the performance of the proposed method is improved compared to that of existing methods. © 2014 SERSC.