A novel data-driven algorithm for object detection, tracking, distance estimation, and size measurement in stereo vision systems

Distance and size estimation of objects of interests is an inevitable task for many navigation and obstacle avoidance algorithms mainly used in autonomus and robotic systems. Stereo vision systems, inspired by human visual perception, can infer depth from images as a cheap and accessible solution. On one hand, accurately calibrating cameras is a challenging task and the main source of error in current stereo vision based distance and size estimation algorithms. On the other hand, considering the recent advancements in Deep Learning, alongside the fact that human eyes do not need calibration but human brain can estimate the distance and size of objects fairly accurate was the main motivation behind this study. The proposed algorithm uses YOLOv8 as the object detector, and an MLP to learn the relation between distance, size, and disparity from collected data in a stereo vision system. In our experiments, conducted at distances ranging from 50 to 200 centimeters with calibrated and uncalibrated cameras, our proposed algorithm showcased accurate performance in both scenarios. It achieved distance measurements with an accuracy of up to 99.99% in select cases and maintained the mean accuracy of 98.15% for distance, 92.87% for width, and 93.92% for height estimations.