An information sensor with in-pixel-processing for geriatric nursing

A new concept of “information sensor” (IS) has been presented in this paper. IS is defined by integrating CMOS image sensor with in-pixel-processing capability of captured image. The output of IS is only the necessary information data for applications instead of image raw data. The purpose of IS is not only to provide a non-complex, low cost, less power consumption system for image information extraction, but also to reduce the risk of privacy releasing. The proposed sensor system has three operation modes as image-display, edge-detection and barycenter-locating. The image-display mode is the standard imager mode with raw data output. The other two modes are used to output the necessary information for locating the specified target (e.g. geriatric or aged individuals) for nursing. A 56×48 IS pixel array with pixel pitch as 25×25 um² and 3.3V operation has been designed and implemented in 0.18-um TSMC CIS technology. The measured results of proposed IS chip demonstrate successful output with raw image, edge extraction and barycenter locating.