Realising emergent image preprocessing tasks in cellular-automaton-alike massively parallel hardware

Abstract

In this paper, we present an emergent computing architecture scheme, denoted as marching pixels (MPs), which is well-suited for massively-parallel embedded systems based realising smart optical sensors. Smart in this context refers to sensors in which signal capturing and signal processing is combined either in one chip or in a compact 3D chip stack. MPs are life-like agents, which are crawling within a pixel field in such a chip in order to find centre points and other attributes of objects in binary images. MPs fulfill these tasks only by utilising local interaction and stigmertic communication. Principal ideas, the architecture and first results are described in this paper along with a comparison to both conventional and other unconventional computing approaches.

Keywords:

• Image processing
• Embedded cameras
• Emergent algorithms
• System-on-chip
• Massively-parallel systems

Notes

^¶ [email protected]

^†Of course, the concept of CA is strong enough to also be expanded to the modelling of mobility as it is essential for artificial ants. However, considered from a pragmatic view the possibilities to explicitly formulate the capability of disposing information and executing arithmetic operations make artificial ants more convenient for this work.

^‡This is a typical procedure applied in industrial image processing to identify objects out of a set of objects known in advance.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dietmar Fey

¶ ¶ [email protected]