Method and system for depth estimation using cross-spectral gated-RGB stereo

A vehicle comprising:

• a gated camera stereo system;
• a red-clear-clear-blue (RCCB) camera;
• at least one memory storing instructions;
• and
• at least one processor communicatively coupled with the at least one memory to execute the stored instructions to:
• control the gated camera stereo system to emit a pulse of light at a predetermined wavelength;
• control a detector of the gated camera stereo system to capture light reflected from a scene after a preset time delay;
• based upon the captured light by the detector of the gated camera stereo system, embed depth data into two-dimensional (2D) gated images using a gate function;
• control the RCCB camera to capture passive high dynamic range (HDR) images;
• extract features corresponding to the gated images and the passive HDR images;
• and
• fuse the extracted features corresponding to the gated images and the passive HDR images by cross-spectral matching for depth estimation.

A computer-implemented method for depth estimation, the computer-implemented comprising:

• controlling a gated camera stereo system to emit a pulse of light at a predetermined wavelength;
• controlling a detector of the gated camera stereo system to capture light reflected from a scene after a preset time delay;
• based upon the captured light by the detector of the gated camera stereo system, embedding depth data into two-dimensional (2D) gated images using a gate function;
• controlling a red-clear-clear-blue RCCB camera to capture passive high dynamic range (HDR) images;
• extracting features corresponding to the gated images and the passive HDR images;
• and
• fusing the extracted features corresponding to the gated images and the passive HDR images by cross-spectral matching for depth estimation.