On the Performance and Implementation of Parallax Free Video See-Through Displays

In see-through systems an observer watches a (background) scene partially occluded by a display. In this display, usually positioned close to the observer, a region of the background scene is shown, yielding the sensation that the display is transparent. To achieve the transparency effect, it is very important to compensate the parallax error and other distortions caused by the image acquisition system. In this paper a detailed study of a video see-through methodology with parallax correction is performed. In a system composed by two cameras-one directed to the user and another to the background scene-and a display, the relative position between the user, the display and the scene is estimated using a feature detection algorithm and the parallax error is compensated assuming a planar scene model. The application of the proposed methodology on Driver Assistance Systems (DAS) is proposed. A theoretical assessment of the algorithm shows that although approximations are proposed to simplify the methodology and reduce the computational cost, such as the planar scene model and fixed working distance, on some practical situations their effects can be neglected without noticeable impact on the perceptual quality of the solution.