Robot vision system with a correlation chip for real-time tracking, optical flow and depth map generation

The authors describe a high-performance robot vision system that performs real-time tracking of moving objects, real-time optical flow computation, and high-speed depth map generation. The system was implemented as a transputer-based vision system augmented with a high-speed correlation processor. The transputer vision board was equipped with three image frame memories, each of which could be used simultaneously for image input, image processing, and image display. Thus, the system could devote all its computation power to image processing without waiting for image input or display. The vision board was also equipped with a standard image compression chip, used as a correlation processor. Using the chip, a very fast correlation-based robot vision system was developed. This system can also be used as a multiprocessor configuration to greatly improve performance