26. Credits

The Ames Stereo Pipeline (ASP) was originally developed by the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG), in the Intelligent Systems Division at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA.

Project Lead

Core Development Team

  • Oleg Alexandrov (NASA/Stinger-Ghaffarian Technologies)

  • Scott McMichael (NASA/Stinger-Ghaffarian Technologies)

Contributors and Developers

  • Zachary Moratto (NASA/Stinger-Ghaffarian Technologies, former ASP Lead Architect)

  • Michael J. Broxton (NASA/Carnegie Mellon University, former ASP Lead Architect) and Project Lead, co-developer of the Vision Workbench)

  • Matthew Hancher (NASA, co-developer of the Vision Workbench)

  • Dr. Ara Nefian (NASA/Carnegie Mellon University)

  • Mike Lundy (NASA/Stinger-Ghaffarian Technologies)

  • Dr. Laurence Edwards (NASA, former IRG Terrain Reconstruction Lead)

  • Monica Palaseanu-Lovejoy (USGS, lead the research on the bathymetry module, Section 8.27)

  • Dr. Randolph Kirk (USGS, contributed many insights to the shape-from-shading functionality, Section 13)

  • Yu Tao and Jan-Peter Muller (University College London, contributed the CASP-GO stereo processing system, Section 15.1)

  • Vinh To (NASA/Stinger-Ghaffarian Technologies)

  • Kyle Husmann (California Polytechnic State University)

  • Sasha Aravkin (Washington State University)

  • Aleksandr Segal (Stanford)

  • Patrick Mihelich (Stanford University)

  • Melissa Bunte (Arizona State University)

  • Matthew Faulkner (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

  • Todd Templeton (UC Berkeley)

  • Morgon Kanter (Bard College)

  • Kerri Cahoy (Stanford University)

  • Ian Saxton (UC San Diego)

  • Trey Smith (NASA)

  • mstyer

  • harguess

  • David Shean (University of Washington)

  • Ben Smith (University of Washington)

  • Andrew Annex (Johns Hopkins University)

  • Joachim Meyer (University of Washington)

  • Jay Laura (USGS)

  • Shashank Bhushan (University of Washington)

26.1. Acknowledgments

The open source Stereo Pipeline leverages stereo image processing work, led by Michael J. Broxton (NASA/CMU), Dr. Laurence Edwards (NASA), Eric Zbinden (formerly NASA/QSS Inc.), Dr. Michael Sims (NASA), and others in the Intelligent Systems Division at NASA Ames Research Center. It has benefited substantially from the contributions of Dr. Keith Nishihara (formerly NASA/Stanford), Randy Sargent (NASA/Carnegie Mellon University), Dr. Judd Bowman (formerly NASA/QSS Inc.), Clay Kunz (formerly NASA/QSS Inc.), and Dr. Matthew Deans (NASA).

The initial adaptation of Ames’s stereo surface reconstruction tools to orbital imagers was a result of a NASA funded, industry led project to develop automated DEM generation techniques for the MGS mission. Our work with that project’s Principal Investigator, Dr. Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS), and Co-Investigator, Dr. Laurence Edwards of NASA Ames, inspired the idea of making stereo surface reconstruction technology available and accessible to a broader community. We thank Dr. Malin and Dr. Edwards for providing the initial impetus that in no small way made this open source stereo pipeline possible, and we thank Dr. Michael Caplinger, Joe Fahle and others at MSSS for their help and technical assistance.

The tools for rig calibration (Section 16.58), fusion of points clouds into meshes (Section 16.41), and texturing of meshes (Section 16.68), were originally developed as part of the NASA ISAAC project, with Trey Smith as project manager, and rely heavily on third-party packages, including Theia SfM, Ceres Solver, VoxBlox, and MVS Texturing.

We’d also like to thank our friends and collaborators Dr. Randolph Kirk, Dr. Brent Archinal, Trent Hare, Mark Rosiek, and David Mayer of the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS’s) Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, AZ, for their encouragement and willingness to share their experience and expertise by answering many of our technical questions. We also thank them for their ongoing support and efforts to help us evaluate our work. Thanks also to the USGS ISIS team, especially Jeff Anderson, Kris Becker, Jay Laura, and Jesse Mapel, for their help in integrating stereo pipeline with the USGS ISIS software package.

Thanks go also to Dr. Mark Robinson, Jacob Danton, Ernest Bowman-Cisneros, Dr. Sam Laurence, and Melissa Bunte at Arizona State University for their help in adapting the Ames Stereo Pipeline to lunar data sets including the Apollo Metric Camera.

We’d also like to thank Dr. David Shean, Dr. Ben Smith, and Dr. Ian Joughin of the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington for providing design direction for adapting Ames Stereo Pipeline to Earth sciences.

Finally, we thank Dr. Ara Nefian, and Dr. Laurence Edwards for their contributions to this software, and Dr. Terry Fong (IRG Group Lead during the first decade or so of ASP’s existence) for his management and support of the open source and public software release process.

Portions of this software were developed with support from the following sources from NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) and Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) funding sources:

  • Mars Technology Program

  • Mars Critical Data Products Initiative

  • Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission

  • Applied Information Systems Research program grant #06-AISRP06-0142

  • Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research (LASER) program grants #07-LASER07-0148 and #11-LASER11-0112

  • ESMD Lunar Mapping and Modeling Program (LMMP)

  • SMD Cryosphere Program

  • The Resource Prospector site selection activity

  • The VIPER mission site selection activity

  • NASA-USGS Interagency Agreement #NNH16AC13I to support the Community Sensor Model (CSM) work (2019-2021).

  • Planetary Data Archiving and Tools program (PDART) grant #19-PDART19_2-0094 under Dr. Ross Beyer (2020-2022).

  • NASA-USGS Interagency Agreement #30499, SAA2-403489 to support the satellite-derived bathymetry work (2020-2021)

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this documentation are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.