Research Interests

• Stereo Matching
• Camera Motion Estimation
• Stereo Vision based 3D Reconstruction

Example

Fully automatic reconstruction of Berlin in 7cm/Pixel, exclusively from 1850 bundle adjusted aerial images. Each image has a resolution of 86 MPixel (i.e. Vexcel UltraCam). For information about the technique, see the TPAMI 2008 paper.

Awards

German Aerospace Center (internal) Science Award 2009 (DLR-Wissenschaftspreis 2009) for "Stereo Processing by Semi-Global Matching and Mutual Information" on 26th November 2009 in Berlin.

SGM is used in various applications at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics of the German Aerospace Center (DLR-RM) for 3D modeling from hand-held stereo cameras, stereo cameras on industrial and mobile ground robots as well as mono cameras on light weight flying robots.

SGM has also been used extensively at our Institute for 2.5D modeling from aerial pushbroom cameras like MFC (DLR), HRSC-AX (DLR) and ADS-40 (DLR/Leica) as well as full frame cameras like UltraCam (Vexcel) and DMC. High resolution models with a total size of 50 000 km² have been created with 5-25 cm/Pixel. Furthermore, SGM has been successfully applied to terrestrial satellite images as well as HRSC images of the ESA probe Mars Express.

SGM is also tested in a real-time FPGA implementation by Daimler AG as base for various driver assistence applications (see Gehrig et al., "A Real-Time Low-Power Stereo Vision Engine Using Semi-Global Matching", ICVS 2009).

Journal Papers

Heiko Hirschmüller and Daniel Scharstein (2009), Evaluation of Stereo Matching Costs on Images with Radiometric Differences, in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Volume 31(9), September 2009, pp. 1582-1599.

Heiko Hirschmüller (2008), Stereo Processing by Semi-Global Matching and Mutual Information, in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Volume 30(2), February 2008, pp. 328-341.

Heiko Hirschmüller, Peter R. Innocent and Jon Garibaldi (2002), Real-Time Correlation-Based Stereo Vision with Reduced Border Errors, International Journal of Computer Vision, Volume 47 (1/2/3), April-June 2002, pp. 229-246.

Peer-reviewed Conference Papers

Annett Chilian and Heiko Hirschmüller (2009), Stereo Camera Based Navigation of Mobile Robots on Rough Terrain, accepted for IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in October 2009 in St. Louis, MO, USA.

Heiko Hirschmüller and Stefan Gehrig (2009), Stereo Matching in the Presence of Sub-Pixel Calibration Errors, in Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 20-25 June 2009, Miami, Florida, USA, pp. 437-444.

Ines Ernst and Heiko Hirschmüller (2008), Mutual Information based Semi-Global Stereo Matching on the GPU, in Proceedings of the International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC08), 1-3 December 2008, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

Anko Börner, Heiko Hirschmüller, Karsten Scheibe, Michael Suppa and Jürgen Wohlfeil (2008), MFC - A Modular Line Camera for 3D World Modelling, Robot Vision: Second International Workshop RobVis 2008, LNCS 4931, 18.-20. February, Auckland, New Zealand, pp. 319-326.

Heiko Hirschmüller and Daniel Scharstein (2007), Evaluation of Cost Functions for Stereo Matching, in Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 18-23 June 2007, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Christian Ott, O. Eiberger, W. Friedl, B. Bauml, U. Hillenbrand, C. Borst, A. Albu-Schaffer, B. Brunner, H. Hirschmüller, S. Kielhofer, R. Konietschke, M. Suppa, T. Wimbock, F. Zacharias, G. Hirzinger (2006), A Humanoid Two-Arm System for Dexterous Manipulation, 6th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, December 2006, Genoa, Italy, pp. 276-283.

Heiko Hirschmüller (2006), Stereo Vision in Structured Environments by Consistent Semi-Global Matching, in Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 17-22 June 2006, New York, NY, USA, pp. 2386-2393.

Heiko Hirschmüller, Frank Scholten, Gerd Hirzinger (2005), Stereo Vision Based Reconstruction of Huge Urban Areas from an Airborne Pushbroom Camera (HRSC), in Lecture Notes in Computer Science: Pattern Recognition, Proceedings of the 27th DAGM Symposium, 30 August - 2 September 2005, Vienna, Austria, Volume 3663, pp. 58-66.

Heiko Hirschmüller (2005), Accurate and Efficient Stereo Processing by Semi-Global Matching and Mutual Information, in Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 20-26 June 2005, San Diego, CA, USA, Volume 2, pp. 807-814.

Heiko Hirschmüller, Peter R. Innocent and Jon M. Garibaldi (2002), Fast, Unconstrained Camera Motion Estimation from Stereo without Tracking and Robust Statistics, in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision, 2-5 December 2002, Singapore, pp. 1099-1104.

Heiko Hirschmüller (2001), Improvements in Real-Time Correlation-Based Stereo Vision, in Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Stereo and Multi-Baseline Vision, 9-10 December 2001, Kauai, Hawaii, pp. 141-148.

Ph.D. Thesis

Heiko Hirschmüller (2003), Stereo Vision Based Mapping and Immediate Virtual Walkthroughs, Ph.D. Thesis, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, June 2003.

Other Conference Papers

Anko Börner, Heiko Hirschmüller, Michael Neidhardt, Michael Nitz, Karsten Scheibe, Jürgen Wohlfeil and Sergej Zuev (2007), Ableitung photogrammetrischer Produkte mit der MFC-Kamera, Dreiländertagung 2007, Gemeinsame Jahrestagung der SGPBF, DGPF und OVG, June 2007, Muttenz, Switzerland.

Anko Börner, Michael Suppa, Thomas Abmayr, Tim Bodenmüller, Andreas Eckardt, Heiko Hirschmüller, Karsten Scheibe and Bernhard Strackenbrock (2006), Ein modulares Sensorsystem zur multiskalaren Erfassung von dreidimensionalen Objekten, Geoinformatik und Erdbeobachtung, 26. Jahrestagung der DGPF, September 2006, Berlin-Adlershof, Germany, pp. 319-326.

Heiko Hirschmüller, Helmut Mayer, G. Neukum and the HRSC-CoI Team (2006), Stereo Processing of HRSC Mars Express Images by Semi-Global Matching, International Archives of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XXXVI, Part 4, 27-30 September 2006, Goa, India.

C. Heipke, J. Oberst, J. Albertz, M. Attwenger, P. Dorninger, E. Dorrer, M. Ewe, S. Gehrke, K. Gwinner, H. Hirschmüller, J. R. Kim, R. L. Kirk, H. Mayer, J.-P. Muller, R. Rengarajan, M. Rentsch, R. Schmidt, F. Scholten, J. Shan, M. Spiegel, M. Wählisch, G. Neukum and the HRSC-CoI Team (2006), The HRSC DTM Test, International Archives of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XXXVI, Part 4, 27-30 September 2006, Goa, India.

Johann Heindl, Martin Otter, Heiko Hirschmüller, Mirko Frommberger, Norbert Sporer, Florian Siegert, Harald Heinrich (2005), The Robocoaster as Simulation Platform - Experiences from the First Authentic Mars Flight Simulation, in Proceedings of the Motion Simulator Conference, 21 September 2005, Braunschweig, Germany.

Gerd Hirzinger, Tim Bodenmüller, Heiko Hirschmüller, Rui Liu, Wolfgang Sepp, Michael Suppa, Thomas Abmayr, Bernhard Strackenbrock (2005), Photo-Realistic 3D-Modelling - From Robotics Perception Towards Cultural Heritage, in International Workshop on Recording, Modelling and Visualization of Cultural Heritage, 22-27 May 2005, Ascona, Switzerland.

Heiko Hirschmüller (2003), Real-Time Map Building from a Stereo Camera under Unconstrained 3D Motion, in Proceedings of the Faculty Research Conference, 14-15 April 2003, Leicester, UK, pp. 1-6, Faculty of Computing Sciences and Engineering, De Montfort University.

Micheal Callaghan and Heiko Hirschmüller (1998), 3-D Visualisation of Design Patterns and Java Programs in Computer Science Education, in Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Teaching of Computing, August 1998, Dublin, Ireland, pp. 37-40.

Heiko Hirschmüller, Michael Callaghan and Alan O'Callaghan (1998), Virtual Learning Environment for Object-Oriented Design Patterns, in Proceedings of Euromedia 98, 5-6 January 1998, Leicester, UK, pp. 238-245.

Other Publications

Heiko Hirschmüller (1993), Pi auf eine Million Stellen, Amiga Magazin (Sonderheft), Markt & Technik Verlag, Germany, Volume 1, pp. 64-66.