An Improved Sum of Squared Difference Algorithm for Automated Distance Measurement

In recent years, with improvement of photoelectric conversion efficiency and accuracy, photoelectric sensor was arranged to simulate binocular stereo vision for 3D measurement, and it has become an important distance measurement method. In this paper, an improved sum of squared difference (SSD) algorithm which can use binocular cameras to measure distance of vehicle ahead was proposed. Firstly, consistency matching calibration was performed when images were acquired. Then, Gaussian blur was used to smooth the image, and grayscale transformation was performed. Next, the Sobel operator was used to detect the edge of images. Finally, the improved SSD was used for stereo matching and disparity calculation, and the distance value could be obtained corresponding to each point. Experimental results showed that the improved SSD algorithm had an accuracy rate of 95.06% when stereo matching and disparity calculation were performed. This algorithm fully meets the requirements of distance measurement.