Design of an electronic saccadic imaging system

An electronic implementation of a saccadic vision system consisting of a CMOS image sensor ("the eye") mounted on a mechanical servomotor ("the neck") is presented. The camera first surveys the wide-angle scene at low-resolution ( 1/4 SXGA), and then switches to a smaller, higher-resolution (SXGA) subwindow for more detailed inspection of salient areas. Image processing on the low-resolution scene quickly extracts the locations of objects of interest against a cluttered background. A saliency map is then generated to plot the regions of interest that require the attention of the high-resolution fovea/subwindow. Saccadic jumps are performed electronically by the camera to redirect the subwindow between salient points quickly. We discuss the design issues involved in the construction of our system prototype (including image processing strategies employed to achieve real-time feature extraction), and we present the preliminary results of our tests using the prototype.