NASA Vision Workbench – computer vision framework

NASA Vision Workbench is a C++ image processing and machine vision library.

The Vision Workbench has been used within NASA for a wide range of image processing tasks, including alignment and stitching of panoramic images, high-dynamic-range imaging, texture analysis and recognition, lunar and planetary map generation, and the production of 3D models from stereo image pairs.

NASA Vision Workbench was designed to support a variety of space exploration tasks, including automated science and engineering analysis, robot perception, and 2D/3D environment reconstruction, though it can also serve as a general-purpose image processing and machine vision framework in other contexts as well.

This package is composed of several modules each of which provides a separate C++ library. The core library provides the basic image and pixel data types as well as a range of fundamental image processing operations.

It is specifically designed for image processing in the context of machine vision.

Features include:

• Solid efficient foundation.
• ‘Lazy’ computation model.
• Scalable support for block-level operations on images.
• Easy to understand end-user syntax.
• Modules:
  • Camera.
    • pinhole and linescan camera models.
  • • EXIF metadata parsing.
  • • bayer filter decoding.
  • Cartography:
    • transformation between map projections.
  • • geo-referenced file IO (GeoTIFF, etc).
  • Core:
    • exception handling.
  • • debugging support.
  • • type system support.
  • • cache support.
  • FileIO:
    • reading and writing JPEG, PNG, TIFF, PDS, OpenEXR files (requires 3rd party libraries).
    • image paging support for large files.
  • HDR:
    • high dynamic range image creation from bracketed low dynamic range exposures.
    • camera response curve estimation.
    • global and local tone mapping operators.
  • Image:
    • convolution — convolve images with linear filters.
    • algebra — image addition, subtraction, and multiplication by a scalar.
    • math — perform per pixel math operations on images (e.g., abs, hypot, sqrt, pow, exp, log, sin, cos, asin, acos, atan2, etc).
    • transformations — translation, rotation, scale, resampling, arbitrary warps.
    • image statistics.
  • Math:
    • vector, matrix, quaternion and linear algebra (interface to LAPACK).
    • optimization — levenberg-Marquardt, conjugate gradient.
    • homographies — estimation of relations between geometric entities.
    • bounding boxes — Determination of geometric extent.
  • Mosaic:
    • assembling large image composites from many source images.
    • multi-band blending.
    • generating on-disk quad-tree representations of extremely large images.
  • Stereo:
    • correlating stereo pairs of images.
    • stereo camera models for 3D reconstruction.
    • outlier rejection.

Website: software.nasa.gov/software/ARC-15761-1A
Support: Documentation, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: NASA Ames Research Center
License: Apache License, Version 2.0

Nasa Vision Workbench is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

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