SUMMARYThe ambiguity of correspondence assignment is alleviated by utilizing the state of the neighboring correspondence of the focal point (local support) in detecting the points of correspondence in stereo vision. However, in detecting the area base points of correspondence with evaluations of the correspondence using windows, specific local supports are utilized, which can interfere with the correct correspondence assignments. In this paper, a scheme for performing correspondence assignments considering local supports which coincide correctly with the surface of an object is proposed. In this scheme, the surface of the object is directly detected as a surface model, using a new proposed GA detection scheme from the stereo degree-of-correspondence space in which the degree of correspondence is expressed as three-dimensional data. As a result, correspondence assignment is performed with correct local supports by evaluating various surface models obtained by GA search from the stereo degree-of-correspondence space. In addition, the areas in which occlusions have occurred are specified by considering uniformity requirements in searching for surface models. Thus, a method for improving the areas containing occlusions utilizing multiple-camera stereo vision is proposed. In this paper, the construction of the stereo degree-of-correspondence space, the GA search scheme, and the specification and improvement of occlusions are presented and the results of simulation experiments with objects of simple shapes are presented. © 2001 Scripta Technica, Electron Comm Jpn Pt 2, 84(8): 3848, 2001