Much research is currently going on about the processing of one or two-camera imagery, possibly combined with other sensors and actuators, in view of achieving attentive vision, i.e. processing selectively some parts of a scene possibly with another resolution. Attentive vision in turn is an element of active vision where the outcome of the image processing triggers changes in the image acquisition geometry and/or of the environment. Almost all this research is assuming classical imaging, scanning and conversion geometries, such as raster based scanning and processing of several digitized outputs on separate image processing units. A consortium of industrial companies comprising Digital Equipment Europe, Thomson CSF, and a few others, have taken a more radical view of this. To meet active vision requirements in industry, an intelligent camera is being designed and built, comprised of three basic elements: 1. a unique Thomson CSF CCD sensor architecture with random addressing 2. the DEC Alpha 21064 275MHz processor chip, sharing the same internal data bus as the digital sensor output 3. a generic library of basic image manipulation, control and image processing functions, executed right in the sensor-internal bus-processor unit, so that only higher level results or commands get exchanged with the processing environment. Extensions to color imaging (with lower spatial resolution), and to stereo imaging, are relatively straightforward. The basic sensor is 1024*1024 pixels with 2*10 bits addresses, and a 2.5 ms (400 frames/second) image data rate compatible with the Alpha bus and 64 bits addressing. For attentive vision, several connex fields of max 40 000 pixels, min 5*3 pixels, can be read and addressed within each 2.5 ms image frame. There is nondestructive readout, and the image processing addressing over 64 bits shall allow for 8 full pixel readouts in one single word. The main difficulties have been identified as the access and reading delays, the signal levels, and dimensioning of some buffer arrays in the processor. The commercial applications targeted initially will be in industrial inspection, traffic control and document imaging. In all of these fields, selective position dependent processing shall take place, followed by feature dependent processing. Very large savings are expected both in terms of solutions costs to the end users, development time, as well as major performance gains for the ultimate processes. The reader will appreciate that at this stage no further implementation details can be given.
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