Application Driven Design Of Embedded Real-Time Image Processors

Abstract

Real-time image processing systems become more and more embedded in systems for industrial inspection, autonomous robots, photo-copying, traffic control, automotive control, surveillance, security, and the like. Starting in the 80's many systems - mainly for low-level image processing - have been developed. The architectures range from framegrabbers with attached Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), to systolic pipelines, square and linear single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) systems, pyramids, PCclusters, and smart cameras. Many of those systems lack a suitable software support, are based on a special programming language, are stand alone and cannot be tightly coupled to the rest of the processors of the embedded system. As a consequence, most often the embedded system cannot be programmed in one uniform way.