Motion detection sensor based on CMOS floating-gate devices

This work presents a novel motion-detection sensor, based on CMOS technology. It uses floating-gate transistors to perform signal aggregation computation, as part of the centroid approximation, for 1-D real-time tracking of a regular-shape object. In fact, the object is detected from binary images, which are captured within the field of view of this sensor. The analog-weighting process for the spatial column-components, in the associated algorithm, is realized by using MOS transistors operating in the triode region. Only binary images are considered, even though image information is sacrificed, faster operation speed and increased functionality is obtained. The motion-detection sensor was fabricated using a 1.2μm, n-well, CMOS process. The design contains a 17x18 cell-array with a fill-factor is 35.6%. The electrical analysis supported by PSpice of this initial CMOS integrated circuit, demonstrates that its extension to a larger prototype for robotic applications is attractive.