Digital Smart Pixel Array : Vision Sensor for Optical Parallel Processing

Abstract

In a conventional image processing, information from the real world is received by the CCD, and subsequently has to be transformed into serial data. This parallel-serial transformation is a bottleneck in the conventional system, and it restricts processing speed. In order to alleviate this bottleneck, we developed an optical parallel processing system consisting of digital smart pixel arrays with the frame rate of <1ms/frame and free space optical interconnections. We have also developed a high-speed machine control system with this optical parallel processing system, in which two digital smart pixel arrays are optically connected. This system is the first actual working system that uses optical parallel processing.