EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems
Volume 2007 (2007), Article ID 80141, 14 pages
doi:10.1155/2007/80141
Research Article
Reconfigurable On-Board Vision Processing for Small Autonomous Vehicles
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo 84602, UT, USA
Received 1 May 2006; Revised 17 August 2006; Accepted 14 September 2006
Academic Editor: Heinrich Garn
Copyright © 2007 Wade S. Fife and James K. Archibald. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
This paper addresses the challenge of supporting real-time vision processing on-board small autonomous vehicles. Local vision gives increased autonomous capability, but it requires substantial computing power that is difficult to provide given the severe constraints of small size and battery-powered operation. We describe a custom FPGA-based circuit board designed to support research in the development of algorithms for image-directed navigation and control. We show that the FPGA approach supports real-time vision algorithms by describing the implementation of an algorithm to construct a three-dimensional (3D) map of the environment surrounding a small mobile robot. We show that FPGAs are well suited for systems that must be flexible and deliver high levels of performance, especially in embedded settings where space and power are significant concerns.