A compact integrated visual motion sensor for ITS applications

We have developed a prototype of a compact integrated visual sensor which detects direction and velocity of motion on a focal plane in a wide brightness range in real time with a newly devised motion measurement method. The sensor is composed of a lens and a single-chip very large scale integration whose die size is 2 mm × 2 mm that was fabricated with a 1.5-μ standard CMOS process. The spatial resolution is 10 × 2. As a result of performance evaluation of the prototype sensor, it was confirmed that the sensor can detect motion direction and velocity up to an on-chip image velocity of 100 mm/s in a response time of 10 μs under an illuminance range between 100 and 100,000 lux. Furthermore, we have demonstrated effectiveness of the visual sensor by applying the sensor to running vehicle detection on a road and blind-corner monitoring at a road junction.