Cooperative Stereopsis matching chip

The cooperative stereo correspondence algorithm by Marr and Poggio (1976) is well known in machine vision. Misha Mahowald and I designed a working, 1-dimensional, analog VLSI chip to do real time stereo matching based on this algorithm. The chip solves the stereo correspondence problem in parallel. Outputs from the chip are scanned out and displayed on a monitor.

Misha later modified this stereo matching idea to incorporate much better notions about the functions of various types of binocular cells in V1 (tuned, near and far, inhibitory, disparity-flat) into a new cooperative model that she also implemented on a chip with an AER interface. This chip formed the cornerstone of her amazing PhD thesis.

• M. Mahowald and T. Delbrück. (1989). Cooperative stereo matching using static and dynamic image features. In C. Mead and M. Ismail (eds.) Analog VLSI Implementation of Neural Systems. Kluwer Academic Publishers: Boston. pp 213-238.
• MPEG movie. (255kB) showing the output from the stereopsis chip in response to a simple 2-depth-plane pattern and a 1-d random-line stereogram.