Monday, 19 September 2016

DARPA seeks smart pixels with thousands of transistors combined with machine learning to provide the most useful view from many sensors

DARPA is seeking to have each camera pixel where each pixel is a smart pixel with 1,000 integrated transistors, which provide each and every pixel with a tiny reprogrammable brain of its own.

This could mean selecting between different thermal (infrared) emissions or different resolutions or frame rates, or even collecting 3-D LIDAR data for mapping and other jobs that increase situational awareness. The camera ultimately would rely on machine learning to autonomously take notice of what is happening in its field of view and reconfigure the imaging sensor based on the context of the situation.

The future sensor Lewis has in mind would even be able to perform many of these functions simultaneously because different patches of the sensor’s carpet of pixels could be reconfigured by way of software to work in different imaging modes. That same reconfigurability should enable the same sensor to toggle between different sensor modes from one lightning-quick frame to the next. No single camera can do that now.

A primary driver here, according to Lewis, who works in DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO), is the shrinking size and cost of militarily important platforms that are finding roles in locations that span from orbit to the seas.

With multi-functional sensors like the ones that would come out of a successful ReImagine program, these smaller and cheaper platforms would provide a degree of situational awareness that today can only come from suites of single-purpose sensors fitted onto larger airborne, ground, space-based, and naval vehicles and platforms. And with the more extensive situational awareness, Lewis said, would come the most important payoff: more informed decision-making.

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