Parallel analog VLSI architectures for computation of heading direction and time-to-contact

To exploit their properties at a system level, we developed parallel image processing architectures for applications that rely mostly on the qualitative properties of the optical flow, rather than on the precise values of the velocity vectors. Specifically, we designed two parallel architectures that employ arrays of elementary motion sensors for the computation of heading direction and time-to-contact. The application domain that we took into consideration for the implementation of such architectures, is the promising one of vehicle navigation. Having defined the types of images to be analyzed and the types of processing to perform, we were able to use a priori infor- VLSI Architectures for Computation of Heading Direction and Time-to-contact 721 mation to integrate selectively the sparse data obtained from the velocity sensors and determine the qualitative properties of the optical flow field of interest.