New-Tech Europe Magazine | Oct 2017 | Digital Edition

Mission-critical machine vision in an insecure IoT world Intelligent machine vision cameras are driven by heterogeneous computing architectures

Dr. Lars Asplund and Dr. Fredrik Bruhn, Unibap AB

We are on the threshold of the next industrial revolution where machine vision will be the major game- changer, as intelligent vision can now even incorporate deep-learning algorithms. These enable cooperative work environments between humans and machines or machine vision that is part of critical-control feedback loops. And these algorithms are most efficiently executed on heterogeneous system architectures. Machine vision moving to “sense-plan-act’” In early applications, machine vision was used with frame grabbers and Digital Signal Processors (DSP). Today, with the development of reasonably priced high performance sensors - one of three major enablers for the new robotics revolution - we can see examples of applications in which recognition is not simply just

a means of identifying well-known schematics in a ‘sense-compare- decide’ manner. Today, robotics – starting with simple stationary systems right up to autonomous vehicles - are transforming towards more sophisticated ‘sense-plan-act’ behavior. In this respect, a vision system is the most powerful eye of a robot which informs it of its position and its environment. And the computing power of Heterogeneous System Architecture-based embedded processors like the AMD G-series SoC provides the brain that understands and interprets the environment. The second enabler is the processor which delivers the required high performance with moderate power consumption. The final part of a smart robot is the act component. Acting robots require high power density in the batteries and high efficiency motors. So state-of-the-art batteries and BLDC

(Brushless DC motors) are enabler number three. The combination of all these three enablers, i.e., their enhanced technologies, makes vision systems and robotics so revolutionary today. New intelligent vision systems So let’s take a closer look at the vision part of this industrial revolution. Human eyes are connected via nerves to the ‘visual cortex’ in our brain. Out of our five senses, the visual cortex accounts for the largest section of the brain. Machine vision systems, such as the IVS-70 (see figure 2) based on parallel computing offered by heterogeneous SoCs, are the enablers of Artificial Visual Cortex for machine vision systems. Their eyes are lenses and optical sensors. Their optic nerves to the Artificial Visual Cortex are high speed connections between the

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