A bio-inspired infrared imager with on chip object computation

This paper discusses a Biologically Inspired Shortwave Infrared (SWIR) imager that performs on chip object detection using temporal and spatial processing embedded in the imager's readout integrated circuit (ROIC). The sensor circuit is designed to detect pixel level intensity changes and correlate the change with nearby intensity changes using multiple thresholding criteria to output object exceedances. The sensor is capable of automatically outputting both normal video and also a reduced data set of binarized exceedances. Therefore this SWIR sensor with onboard temporal spatial sensing should be well suited to both manned and unmanned sensing scenarios which could benefit from automated object detection and reduced data sets.