GROUND SURFACE ESTIMATION USING GROUND DISPARITIES FOR AUTONOMOUS AND SEMI-AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS AND APPLICATIONS

Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to surface estimation using stereo imaging and surface disparities. For example, a surface disparity field representing a surface in the environment (e.g., the ground) may be estimated from stereo image data and used for various downstream tasks. For example, the difference between a stereo disparity field and a ground disparity field may be used to detect objects, a representation of a navigable space may be generated by radially casting 2D rays in the ground disparity field, the ground disparity field may be used to compensate ego-motion for high dynamic attitude changes, and/or the ground disparity field may be lifted to 3D and used to fit a surface profile to points sampled from the lifted point cloud.