295 research outputs found
Event-based Vision: A Survey
Event cameras are bio-inspired sensors that differ from conventional frame
cameras: Instead of capturing images at a fixed rate, they asynchronously
measure per-pixel brightness changes, and output a stream of events that encode
the time, location and sign of the brightness changes. Event cameras offer
attractive properties compared to traditional cameras: high temporal resolution
(in the order of microseconds), very high dynamic range (140 dB vs. 60 dB), low
power consumption, and high pixel bandwidth (on the order of kHz) resulting in
reduced motion blur. Hence, event cameras have a large potential for robotics
and computer vision in challenging scenarios for traditional cameras, such as
low-latency, high speed, and high dynamic range. However, novel methods are
required to process the unconventional output of these sensors in order to
unlock their potential. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the
emerging field of event-based vision, with a focus on the applications and the
algorithms developed to unlock the outstanding properties of event cameras. We
present event cameras from their working principle, the actual sensors that are
available and the tasks that they have been used for, from low-level vision
(feature detection and tracking, optic flow, etc.) to high-level vision
(reconstruction, segmentation, recognition). We also discuss the techniques
developed to process events, including learning-based techniques, as well as
specialized processors for these novel sensors, such as spiking neural
networks. Additionally, we highlight the challenges that remain to be tackled
and the opportunities that lie ahead in the search for a more efficient,
bio-inspired way for machines to perceive and interact with the world
Navigating the Unknown: Uncertainty-Aware Compute-in-Memory Autonomy of Edge Robotics
This paper addresses the challenging problem of energy-efficient and
uncertainty-aware pose estimation in insect-scale drones, which is crucial for
tasks such as surveillance in constricted spaces and for enabling non-intrusive
spatial intelligence in smart homes. Since tiny drones operate in highly
dynamic environments, where factors like lighting and human movement impact
their predictive accuracy, it is crucial to deploy uncertainty-aware prediction
algorithms that can account for environmental variations and express not only
the prediction but also confidence in the prediction. We address both of these
challenges with Compute-in-Memory (CIM) which has become a pivotal technology
for deep learning acceleration at the edge. While traditional CIM techniques
are promising for energy-efficient deep learning, to bring in the robustness of
uncertainty-aware predictions at the edge, we introduce a suite of novel
techniques: First, we discuss CIM-based acceleration of Bayesian filtering
methods uniquely by leveraging the Gaussian-like switching current of CMOS
inverters along with co-design of kernel functions to operate with extreme
parallelism and with extreme energy efficiency. Secondly, we discuss the
CIM-based acceleration of variational inference of deep learning models through
probabilistic processing while unfolding iterative computations of the method
with a compute reuse strategy to significantly minimize the workload. Overall,
our co-design methodologies demonstrate the potential of CIM to improve the
processing efficiency of uncertainty-aware algorithms by orders of magnitude,
thereby enabling edge robotics to access the robustness of sophisticated
prediction frameworks within their extremely stringent area/power resources
FPGA design methodology for industrial control systems—a review
This paper reviews the state of the art of fieldprogrammable gate array (FPGA) design methodologies with a focus on industrial control system applications. This paper starts with an overview of FPGA technology development, followed by a presentation of design methodologies, development tools and relevant CAD environments, including the use of portable hardware description languages and system level programming/design tools. They enable a holistic functional approach with the major advantage of setting up a unique modeling and evaluation environment for complete industrial electronics systems. Three main design rules are then presented. These are algorithm refinement, modularity, and systematic search for the best compromise between the control performance and the architectural constraints. An overview of contributions and limits of FPGAs is also given, followed by a short survey of FPGA-based intelligent controllers for modern industrial systems. Finally, two complete and timely case studies are presented to illustrate the benefits of an FPGA implementation when using the proposed system modeling and design methodology. These consist of the direct torque control for induction motor drives and the control of a diesel-driven synchronous stand-alone generator with the help of fuzzy logic
International Summerschool Computer Science 2014: Proceedings of Summerschool 7.7. - 13.7.2014
Proceedings of International Summerschool Computer Science 201
Parallelized Particle and Gaussian Sum Particle Filters for Large Scale Freeway Traffic Systems
Large scale traffic systems require techniques able to: 1) deal with high amounts of data and heterogenous data coming from different types of sensors, 2) provide robustness in the presence of sparse sensor data, 3) incorporate different models that can deal with various traffic regimes, 4) cope with multimodal conditional probability density functions for the states. Often centralized architectures face challenges due to high communication demands. This paper develops new estimation techniques able to cope with these problems of large traffic network systems. These are Parallelized Particle Filters (PPFs) and a Parallelized Gaussian Sum Particle Filter (PGSPF) that are suitable for on-line traffic management. We show how complex probability density functions of the high dimensional trafc state can be decomposed into functions with simpler forms and the whole estimation problem solved in an efcient way. The proposed approach is general, with limited interactions which reduces the computational time and provides high estimation accuracy. The efciency of the PPFs and PGSPFs is evaluated in terms of accuracy, complexity and communication demands and compared with the case where all processing is centralized
A Spiking Neural Network Model of the Medial Superior Olive Using Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity for Sound Localization
Sound localization can be defined as the ability to identify the position of an input sound source and is considered a powerful aspect of mammalian perception. For low frequency sounds, i.e., in the range 270 Hz–1.5 KHz, the mammalian auditory pathway achieves this by extracting the Interaural Time Difference between sound signals being received by the left and right ear. This processing is performed in a region of the brain known as the Medial Superior Olive (MSO). This paper presents a Spiking Neural Network (SNN) based model of the MSO. The network model is trained using the Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity learning rule using experimentally observed Head Related Transfer Function data in an adult domestic cat. The results presented demonstrate how the proposed SNN model is able to perform sound localization with an accuracy of 91.82% when an error tolerance of ±10° is used. For angular resolutions down to 2.5°, it will be demonstrated how software based simulations of the model incur significant computation times. The paper thus also addresses preliminary implementation on a Field Programmable Gate Array based hardware platform to accelerate system performance
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