A real-time reconfigurable foveal target acquisition and tracking system

This paper presents a target acquisition and tracking system based on the biomimetic concept of foveal vision. The system electronically reconfigures the resolution, size, shape, and focal plane position of visual acuity to meet time-varying operational requirements while maximizing the relevance of acquired video. A reconfigurable multiresolution active pixel CMOS imaging array is integrated in a closed-loop fashion with video processing and configuration control (i.e., visual attention). Imager and algorithm configuration is updated frame-by-frame and reactively to target and scene conditions. By dynamically tailoring the visual acuity of the sensor itself, the relevance of acquired visual information is maximized and a fast update rate is achieved with reduced communications bandwidth and processing requirements throughout the entire system. The system also features small size and less power consumption, and does not require a pointing mechanism. The distinguishing features of reconfigurable foveal machine vision are presented, and the hardware and software architecture of the target acquisition and tracking system is discussed. Real-time experimental results for automated target search, detection, interrogation, and tracking are then presented.