The Eye-RIS CMOS Vision System

Eye-RIS is the name of a family of vision systems which are conceived for single-chip integration using CMOS technologies. The Eye-RIS systems employ a bio-inspired architecture where image acquisition and processing are truly intermingled and the processing itself is realized in two steps. At the first step processing is fully parallel owing to the concourse of dedicated circuit structures which are integrated close to the sensors. These circuit structures handle basically analog information. At the second step, processing is realized on digitally-coded information data by means of digital processors. Overall, the processing architecture resembles that of natural vision systems, where parallel processing is made at the retina (first layer) and significant reduction of the information happens as the signal travels from the retina up to the visual cortex. This chapter outlines the concept of the Eye-RIS system and its main components and presents experimental data to illustrate its practical operation.