NBVC - A Benchmark for Depth Estimation from Narrow-Baseline Video Clips.

We present a benchmark for online, video-based depth estimation, a problem that is not covered by the current set of benchmarks for evaluating 3D reconstruction, which focus on offline, batch reconstruction. Online depth estimation from video captured by a moving camera is a key enabling technology for compelling applications in robotics and augmented reality. Inspired by progress in many aspects of robotics due to benchmarks and datasets, we propose a new benchmark called NBVC for evaluating methods for online depth estimation from video. Our benchmark is composed of short video sequences with corresponding high-quality ground truth depth maps, derived from the recent Tanks and Temples dataset. We are hopeful that our work will be instrumental in the development of learning-based algorithms for online depth estimation from video clips, and will also lead to improvements in conventional approaches. In addition to the benchmark, we present a superpixel-based plane sweeping stereo algorithm and use it to investigate various aspects of the problem. The paper contains our initial findings and conclusions.