Vision Chip 1: Low Noise Imager with Centroid Tracking
- CMOS technology allows the integration of photoreception and processing on one chip
- Combined 36 x 120 array of video pixels with 36 x 60 array of centroid-tracking pixels
- Noise reduction techniques (e.g. Correlated Double Sampling) improve image quality
- Compact, continuous-time and parallel mixed-signal processing for motion and centroid localization and tracking
- Active gaze-control for visual stabilization can be done in real-time due to fast focal-plane image processing
Chip micrograph, and layout of one
centroid-tracking pixel with two video image pixels
- Real-time and direct control of actuators for visual stabilization and guidance during surgery
- Compensation of fast tissue transient motion, e.g. for surgery on a beating heart
- Autonomous visual guidance of probes, endoscopes and surgical tools for a variety of surgical operations
- High-quality visual feedback and high accuracy motion measurement to surgeons and robots
- Focal-plane processing offers smaller, faster and cheaper system than digitizing video and processing in main computer
- Hardware accelerator for vision software, which may be used in a variety of surgical systems.