Seeing Chips: Analog VLSI Circuits for Computer Vision

Seeing Chips: Analog VLSI Circuits for Computer Vision

Vision is simple. We open our eyes and, instantly, the world surrounding us is perceived in all its splendor. Yet Artificial Intelligence has been trying with very limited success for over 20 years to endow machines with similar abilities. A large van, filled with computers and driving unguided at a mile per hour across gently sloping hills in Colorado and using a laser-range system to ”see” is...

Real-Time Computer Vision and Robotics Using Analog VLSI Circuits

The long-term goal of our laboratory is the development of analog resistive network-based VLSI implementations of early and intermediate vision algorithms. We demonstrate an experimental circuit for smoothing and segmenting noisy and sparse depth data using the resistive fuse and a 1-D edge-detection circuit for computing zero-crossings using two resistive grids with different spaceconstants. T...

Object-Based Analog VLSI Vision Circuits

We describe two successfully working, analog VLSI vision circuits that move beyond pixel-based early vision algorithms. One circuit, implementing the dynamic wires model, provides for dedicated lines of communication among groups of pixels that share a common property. The chip uses the dynamic wires model to compute the arclength of visual contours. Another circuit labels all points inside a g...

New Architecture Paradigms for Analog VLSI Chips

Abstract — This paper proposes hypothetical guidelines for identifying applications which are more suitable for analog VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) chip implementations rather than conventional digital approaches. Significant merits are realized when new architecture paradigms become available by replacing conventional digital circuits with analog ones. There are two major reasons to mak...

Vision Chips or Seeing Silicon