An embedded vision system based on an analog VLSI optical flow vision sensor

We propose a novel programmable miniature vision module based on a custom designed analog very-large-scale-integrated (aVLSI) vision sensor. The sensor provides the logarithmically compressed and temporally adapted intensity image as well as a dense smooth optical flow estimate. The fully parallel and analog network architecture of the sensor guarantees efficient real-time visual processing. The module embeds the aVLSI sensor within commercial off-the-shelves digital hardware that controls the sensor read-out and permits additional higher-level post-processing of the intensity image and optical flow data. The combination of analog and digital processing leads to a computationally very powerful, yet small and potentially cheap vision module. It can be used stand-alone or integrated in larger vision or robotic systems. Standard interfaces guarantee easy control and programming, and make the vision module especially well suited for education as well as applied research in the robotic sciences.