Videos of the day [TinyML and WACV]

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

Event-based sensing and computing for efficient edge artificial intelligence and TinyML applications
Federico CORRADI, Senior Neuromorphic Researcher, IMEC

The advent of neuro-inspired computing represents a paradigm shift for edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) and TinyML applications. Neurocomputing principles enable the development of neuromorphic systems with strict energy and cost reduction constraints for signal processing applications at the edge. In these applications, the system needs to accurately respond to the data sensed in real-time, with low power, directly in the physical world, and without resorting to cloud-based computing resources.
In this talk, I will introduce key concepts underpinning our research: on-demand computing, sparsity, time-series processing, event-based sensory fusion, and learning. I will then showcase some examples of a new sensing and computing hardware generation that employs these neuro-inspired fundamental principles for achieving efficient and accurate TinyML applications. Specifically, I will present novel computer architectures and event-based sensing systems that employ spiking neural networks with specialized analog and digital circuits. These systems use an entirely different model of computation than our standard computers. Instead of relying upon software stored in memory and fast central processing units, they exploit real-time physical interactions among neurons and synapses and communicate using binary pulses (i.e., spikes). Furthermore, unlike software models, our specialized hardware circuits consume low power and naturally perform on-demand computing only when input stimuli are present. These advancements offer a route toward TinyML systems composed of neuromorphic computing devices for real-world applications.



Improving Single-Image Defocus Deblurring: How Dual-Pixel Images Help Through Multi-Task Learning

Authors: Abdullah Abuolaim (York University)*; Mahmoud Afifi (Apple); Michael S Brown (York University) 
 
Many camera sensors use a dual-pixel (DP) design that operates as a rudimentary light field providing two sub-aperture views of a scene in a single capture. The DP sensor was developed to improve how cameras perform autofocus. Since the DP sensor's introduction, researchers have found additional uses for the DP data, such as depth estimation, reflection removal, and defocus deblurring. We are interested in the latter task of defocus deblurring. In particular, we propose a single-image deblurring network that incorporates the two sub-aperture views into a multi-task framework. Specifically, we show that jointly learning to predict the two DP views from a single blurry input image improves the network's ability to learn to deblur the image. Our experiments show this multi-task strategy achieves +1dB PSNR improvement over state-of-the-art defocus deblurring methods. In addition, our multi-task framework allows accurate DP-view synthesis (e.g., ~39dB PSNR) from the single input image. These high-quality DP views can be used for other DP-based applications, such as reflection removal. As part of this effort, we have captured a new dataset of 7,059 high-quality images to support our training for the DP-view synthesis task.




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Prophesee interview in EETimes

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

EETimes has published an interview with CEO of Prophesee about their event sensor technology. Some excerpts below.

 
Prophesee collaborated with Sony on creating the IMX636 event sensor chip.

 

Meaning of "neuromorphic"

Most companies doing neuromorphic sensing and computing have a similar vision in mind, but implementations and strategies will be different based on varying product, market, and investment constraints. ...

... there is a fundamental belief that the biological model has superior characteristics compared to the conventional ...

Markets targeted

... the sector closest to commercial adoption of this technology is industrial machine vision. ...

The second key market for the IMX 636 is consumer technologies, ... the event–based camera is used alongside a full–frame camera, detecting motion ... correct any blur.

Prophesee is also working with a customer on automotive driver monitoring solutions... Applications here include eye blinking detection, tracking or face tracking, and micro–expression detection. 

Commercialization strategy

The company recently released a new evaluation kit (EVK4) for the IMX 636. Metavision (simulator) SDK for event–based vision has also recently been open–sourced ...

 

Future Directions

Prophesee plans to continue development of both hardware and software, alongside new evaluation kits, development kits, and reference designs.

Two future directions... 

further reduction of pixel size (pixel pitch) and overall reduction of the sensor to make it suitable for compact consumer applications such as wearables. 

... facilitating the integration of event–based sensing with conventional SoC platforms.

“The closer you get to the acquisition of the information, the better off you are in terms of efficiency and low latency. You also avoid the need to encode and transmit the data. So this is something that we are pursuing.”

“The ultimate goal of neuromorphic technology is to have both the sensing and processing neuromorphic or event–based, but we are not yet there in terms of maturity of this type of solution,”

Full article here: https://www.eetimes.com/neuromorphic-sensing-coming-soon-to-consumer-products/?

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Preprint on unconventional cameras for automotive applications

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

From arXiv.org --- You Li et al. write:

Autonomous vehicles rely on perception systems to understand their surroundings for further navigation missions. Cameras are essential for perception systems due to the advantages of object detection and recognition provided by modern computer vision algorithms, comparing to other sensors, such as LiDARs and radars. However, limited by its inherent imaging principle, a standard RGB camera may perform poorly in a variety of adverse scenarios, including but not limited to: low illumination, high contrast, bad weather such as fog/rain/snow, etc. Meanwhile, estimating the 3D information from the 2D image detection is generally more difficult when compared to LiDARs or radars. Several new sensing technologies have emerged in recent years to address the limitations of conventional RGB cameras. In this paper, we review the principles of four novel image sensors: infrared cameras, range-gated cameras, polarization cameras, and event cameras. Their comparative advantages, existing or potential applications, and corresponding data processing algorithms are all presented in a systematic manner. We expect that this study will assist practitioners in the autonomous driving society with new perspectives and insights.








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Will event-cameras dominate computer vision?

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Dr. Ryad Benosman, a professor at University of Pittsburgh believes a huge shift is coming to how we capture and process images in computer vision applications. He predicts that event-based (or, more broadly, neuromorphic) vision sensors are going to dominate in the future.

Dr. Benosman will be a keynote speaker at this year's Embedded Vision Summit

EETimes published an interview with him; some excerpts below.


According to Benosman, until the image sensing paradigm is no longer useful, it holds back innovation in alternative technologies. The effect has been prolonged by the development of high–performance processors such as GPUs which delay the need to look for alternative solutions.

“Why are we using images for computer vision? That’s the million–dollar question to start with,” he said. “We have no reasons to use images, it’s just because there’s the momentum from history. Before even having cameras, images had momentum.”

Benosman argues, image camera–based techniques for computer vision are hugely inefficient. His analogy is the defense system of a medieval castle: guards positioned around the ramparts look in every direction for approaching enemies. A drummer plays a steady beat, and on each drumbeat, every guard shouts out what they see. Among all the shouting, how easy is it to hear the one guard who spots an enemy at the edge of a distant forest?

“People are burning so much energy, it’s occupying the entire computation power of the castle to defend itself,” Benosman said. If an interesting event is spotted, represented by the enemy in this analogy, “you’d have to go around and collect useless information, with people screaming all over the place, so the bandwidth is huge… and now imagine you have a complicated castle. All those people have to be heard.”

“Pixels can decide on their own what information they should send, instead of acquiring systematic information they can look for meaningful information — features,” he said. “That’s what makes the difference.”

This event–based approach can save a huge amount of power, and reduce latency, compared to systematic acquisition at a fixed frequency.

“You want something more adaptive, and that’s what that relative change [in event–based vision] gives you, an adaptive acquisition frequency,” he said. “When you look at the amplitude change, if something moves really fast, we get lots of samples. If something doesn’t change, you’ll get almost zero, so you’re adapting your frequency of acquisition based on the dynamics of the scene. That’s what it brings to the table. That’s why it’s a good design.”


He goes on to admit some of the key challenges that need to be addressed before neuromorphic vision becomes the dominant paradigm. He believes these challenges are surmountable.

“The problem is, once you increase the number of pixels, you get a deluge of data, because you’re still going super fast,” he said. “You can probably still process it in real time, but you’re getting too much relative change from too many pixels. That’s killing everybody right now, because they see the potential, but they don’t have the right processor to put behind it.” 

“[Today’s DVS] sensors are extremely fast, super low bandwidth, and have a high dynamic range so you can see indoors and outdoors,” Benosman said. “It’s the future. Will it take off? Absolutely!”

“Whoever can put the processor out there and offer the full stack will win, because it’ll be unbeatable,” he added. 

Read the full article here: https://www.eetimes.com/a-shift-in-computer-vision-is-coming/

 

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Telluride Neuromorphic Workshop 2022

Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

The 2022 edition of the Telluride Neuromorphic Workshop series will be held in-person June 26 to July 16 in beautiful Telluride, Colorado. The topics of interest are broadly in "neuromorphic engineering" with neuromorphic vision sensors (including event cameras and other "spiking"-based vision sensors) being key areas of interest.

Neuromorphic engineers design and fabricate artificial neural systems whose organizing principles are based on those of biological nervous systems. Over the past 27 years, the neuromorphic engineering research community focused on the understanding of low-level sensory processing and systems infrastructure; efforts are now expanding to apply this knowledge and infrastructure to addressing higher-level problems in perception, cognition, and learning. In this 3-week intensive workshop and through the Institute for Neuromorphic Engineering (INE), the mission is to promote interaction between senior and junior researchers; to educate new members of the community; to introduce new enabling fields and applications to the community; to promote ongoing collaborative activities emerging from the Workshop, and to promote a self-sustaining research field.

The workshop will be organized in four topic areas

  • Neuromorphic Tactile Exploration (Enhance the tactile exploration capabilities of robots)
  • Lifelong Learning at Scale: From Neuroscience Theory to Robotic Applications (Apply neuro-inspired principles of lifelong learning to autonomous systems.)
  • Cross-modality brain signals: auditory, visual and motor 
  • Neuromorphics Tools, Techniques and Hardware (SpiNNaker 2 and FPAAs)

Researchers from academia, industry and national labs are all encouraged to apply... 

... in particular if they are prepared to work on specific projects, talk about their own work or bring demonstrations to Telluride (e.g. robots, chips, software). 

An application is required to attend, and financial support is available. Application deadline is April 8, 2022.

Call for applications.

Application submission page.

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