Abstract
This paper presents a machine vision system for real-time computation of distance and angle of a camera from a set of reference points located on a target board. Three different smart camera architectures were explored to compare performance parameters such as power consumption, frame speed and latency. Architecture 1 consists of hardware machine vision modules modeled at Register Transfer (RT) level and a soft-core processor on a single FPGA chip. Architecture 2 is commercially available software based smart camera, Matrox Iris GT. Architecture 3 is a two-chip solution composed of hardware machine vision modules on FPGA and an external microcontroller. Results from a performance comparison show that Architecture 2 has higher latency and consumes much more power than Architecture 1 and 3. However, Architecture 2 benefits from an easy programming model. Smart camera system with FPGA and external microcontroller has lower latency and consumes less power as compared to single FPGA chip having hardware modules and soft-core processor.
Highlights
Smart cameras are real-time machine vision systems
The main contribution of this article is an evaluation of three different smart camera systems having computation either: on a single-chip FPGA, or a heterogeneous system consisting of an FPGA and microcontroller versus a commercially available smart camera based on an Intel computer and Microsoft Windows
Maximum frame speed is calculated based on maximum clock frequency reported by Xilinx synthesis tool and without considering speed of image sensor
Summary
Smart cameras are real-time machine vision systems. Real-time machine vision systems generally perform image capturing, processing of captured images and extracting the useful information which is used for decision making. The typical applications in which smart cameras are applied include process control, surveillance, optical navigation and robot vision. Among these applications, optical navigation and robot vision require high frame speed and low computational latency. Optical navigation and robot vision require high frame speed and low computational latency This requirement on high frame speed comes from the control and regulation of a robot’s motion [2]. Most of the above discussed smart camera applications require programmability for easy prototyping and incorporation of future modifications
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