Design and Evaluation of SmallFloat SIMD extensions to the RISC-V ISA

RISC-V is an open-source instruction set architecture (ISA) with a modular design consisting of a mandatory base part plus optional extensions. The RISC-V 32IMFC ISA configuration has been widely adopted for the design of new-generation, low-power processors. Motivated by the important energy savings that smaller-than-32-bit FP types have enabled in several application domains and related compute platforms, some recent studies have published encouraging early results for their adoption in RISC-V processors. In this paper we introduce a set of ISA extensions for RISC-V 32IMFC, supporting scalar and SIMD operations (fitting the 32-bit register size) for 8-bit and two 16-bit FP types. The proposed extensions are enabled by exposing the new FP types to the standard C/C++ type system and an implementation for the RISC-V GCC compiler is presented. As a further, novel contribution, we extensively characterize the performance and energy savings achievable with the proposed extensions. On average, experimental results show that their adoption provide benefits in terms of performance (1.64 7 speedup for 16-bit and 2.18 7 for 8-bit types) and energy consumption (30% saving for 16-bit and 50% for 8-bit types). We also illustrate an approach based on automatic precision tuning to make effective use of the new FP types

An Energy-Efficient IoT node for HMI applications based on an ultra-low power Multicore Processor

Developing wearable sensing technologies and unobtrusive devices is paving the way to the design of compelling applications for the next generation of systems for a smart IoT node for Human Machine Interaction (HMI). In this paper we present a smart sensor node for IoT and HMI based on a programmable Parallel Ultra-Low-Power (PULP) platform. We tested the system on a hand gesture recognition application, which is a preferred way of interaction in HMI design. A wearable armband with 8 EMG sensors is controlled by our IoT node, running a machine learning algorithm in real-time, recognizing up to 11 gestures with a power envelope of 11.84 mW. As a result, the proposed approach is capable to 35 hours of continuous operation and 1000 hours in standby. The resulting platform minimizes effectively the power required to run the software application and thus, it allows more power budget for high-quality AFE

GESTURE RECOGNITION FOR PENCAK SILAT TAPAK SUCI REAL-TIME ANIMATION

The main target in this research is a design of a virtual martial arts training system in real-time and as a tool in learning martial arts independently using genetic algorithm methods and dynamic time warping. In this paper, it is still in the initial stages, which is focused on taking data sets of martial arts warriors using 3D animation and the Kinect sensor cameras, there are 2 warriors x 8 moves x 596 cases/gesture = 9,536 cases. Gesture Recognition Studies are usually distinguished: body gesture and hand and arm gesture, head and face gesture, and, all three can be studied simultaneously in martial arts pencak silat, using martial arts stance detection with scoring methods. Silat movement data is recorded in the form of oni files using the OpenNI ™ (OFW) framework and BVH (Bio Vision Hierarchical) files as well as plug-in support software on Mocap devices. Responsiveness is a measure of time responding to interruptions, and is critical because the system must be able to meet the demand

Evaluación de modelos para el reconocimiento de gestos en señales biométricas, para un usuario con movilidad reducida

This paper compares the results of three computational models (pattern recognition, hidden Markov models, and bag of features) for recognizing the hand gestures of a user with reduced mobility using biometric signal processing. The evaluation of the models included eight gestures co-designed with a person with reduced mobility. The models were evaluated using a cross-validation scheme, calculating sensitivity and precision metrics, and a data set of ten repetitions of each gesture. It can be concluded that the bag-of-features model achieved the best performance considering the two metrics under evaluation; the traditional pattern recognition model, using vector support machines, produced the most stable results; and the hidden Markov models had the lowest performance.Este trabajo presenta los resultados de una comparación de tres modelos computaciones (reconocimiento de patrones, modelos ocultos de Markov y bolsas de características), para el reconocimiento de gestos por medio del procesamiento de señales biométricas, para un usuario con movilidad reducida. La evaluación involucra ocho gestos diseñados de forma participativa con un usuario con problemas de movilidad y se desarrolló mediante un esquema de validación cruzada, en el que se calcularon métricas de sensibilidad y precisión, para un conjunto de datos formado por diez repeticiones de cada gesto. Los resultados obtenidos permitieron concluir que las bolsas de características son el modelo con mejor desempeño para las dos métricas evaluadas. El modelo de tradicional de reconocimiento de patrones al usar máquinas de soporte vectorial mostró los resultados más estables y los modelos ocultos de Markov presentaron el desempeño más bajo

A sub-10mW real-Time implementation for EMG hand gesture recognition based on a multi-core biomedical SoC

Real-Time biosignal classification in power-constrained embedded applications is a key step in designing portable e-healtb devices requiring hardware integration along with concurrent signal processing. This paper presents an application based on a novel biomedical System-On-Chip (SoC) for signal acquisition and processing combining a homogeneous multi-core cluster with a versatile bio-potential front-end. The presented implementation acquires raw EMG signals from 3 passive gel-electrodes and classifies 3 hand gestures using a Support Vector Machine (SVM) pattern recognition algorithm. Performance matches state-of-The-Art high-end systems both in terms of recognition accuracy (>S5%) and of real-Time execution (gesture recognition time 300 ms). The power consumption of the employed biomedical SoC is below 10 mW, outperforming implementations on conunercial MCUs by a factor of 10, ensuring a battery life of up to 160 hours with a common Li-ion 1600 mAh battery