MAVIS: A special purpose neural computational system for ATR

Abstract

Continuing work at the Naval Air Warfare Center, China Lake, on the application of neural network technology to weapons systems for the US Navy has resulted in the design, fabrication and testing of a massively parallel neural computer. The Missileborne Artificial Vision System (MA VIS) is designed around a paradigm which emulates the computational form of vertebrate retina and visual cortex. This form is called corticomorphic processing. This system is built around the Adaptive Solutions CNAPS chip and operates in real-time with a wide variety of imaging sensors. The actual measured capacity to compute is beyond 12,000 multiply accumulate type operations per pixel per frame at 60 frames per second for a missile sized focal plane array. The hardware is designed to be packaged into a very small volume compatible with aircraft and missile constraints. Several biologically motivated models have been demonstrated on the system.