PROGRAMMABLE MIXED-SIGNAL INTEGRATED CIRCUIT ARCHITECTURE FOR THE PRODUCTION OF AUTONOMOUS VISION SYSTEMS IN A SINGLE CHIP AND/OR PRE-PROCESSING OF IMAGES IN HIGHER-LEVEL SYSTEMS

摘要

The architecture designed performs the sensing, storage and processing of images in a massively parallel, concurrent and spatially distributed manner, and comprises a regular two-dimensional spatial distribution of locally interconnected identical cells combining photo-transduction, processing and storage capabilities and a digital processing and storage system. The operations, as well as the specific parameters they are performed with, are controlled in a global manner, i.e. equally for all cells with spatially uniform values, from circuits located in the periphery of the cell distribution. A digital processor is responsible for controlling the sensor / analogue processor and for performing high level processing tasks, making decisions based on the images acquired and processed in parallel by the focal plane processor.