RobuSTereo: Robust Zero-Shot Stereo Matching under Adverse Weather
This addresses a domain-specific problem for computer vision applications like autonomous driving, but it is incremental as it builds on existing methods for data generation and feature extraction.
The paper tackles the problem of stereo matching models struggling in adverse weather conditions by proposing RobuSTereo, which uses a diffusion-based simulation pipeline and a robust feature encoder to enhance zero-shot generalization, achieving significant improvements in robustness across diverse weather scenarios.
Learning-based stereo matching models struggle in adverse weather conditions due to the scarcity of corresponding training data and the challenges in extracting discriminative features from degraded images. These limitations significantly hinder zero-shot generalization to out-of-distribution weather conditions. In this paper, we propose \textbf{RobuSTereo}, a novel framework that enhances the zero-shot generalization of stereo matching models under adverse weather by addressing both data scarcity and feature extraction challenges. First, we introduce a diffusion-based simulation pipeline with a stereo consistency module, which generates high-quality stereo data tailored for adverse conditions. By training stereo matching models on our synthetic datasets, we reduce the domain gap between clean and degraded images, significantly improving the models' robustness to unseen weather conditions. The stereo consistency module ensures structural alignment across synthesized image pairs, preserving geometric integrity and enhancing depth estimation accuracy. Second, we design a robust feature encoder that combines a specialized ConvNet with a denoising transformer to extract stable and reliable features from degraded images. The ConvNet captures fine-grained local structures, while the denoising transformer refines global representations, effectively mitigating the impact of noise, low visibility, and weather-induced distortions. This enables more accurate disparity estimation even under challenging visual conditions. Extensive experiments demonstrate that \textbf{RobuSTereo} significantly improves the robustness and generalization of stereo matching models across diverse adverse weather scenarios.