Hardware-oriented dynamically adaptive disparity estimation algorithm and its real-time hardware

A real-time stereo camera disparity estimation device comprising:

• an input device arranged to input measured data corresponding to rows of left and right images;
• a memory device arranged to buffer the input measured data;
• a processor for rotating data to align the rows of left and right images in a same column;
• a processor for data allocation to create variable window sizes to adapt a window size based on a local texture on the left and right images;
• a processor for metrics calculation to compute stereo matching costs for disparities between the left and right images within a block within the adapted window size within a block within the adapted window size;
• and
• a processor for adaptive disparity selection configured to select disparity values with minimum matching costs from the stereo matching costs as disparity results.