Realizing Real-Time Centroid Detection of Multiple Objects with Marching Pixels Algorithms

In this paper we present a class of emergent algorithms called Marching Pixels which can be used for real time image processing in smart camera chips. Marching Pixels are based on hardware agents which are virtually crawling in a pixel grid image to find attributes like centroid, rotation and size of an arbitrary number of objects given in an image. Due to the distributed and local processing scheme of MPs reply times in milliseconds can be fulfilled. This means in that time is determined where pre-known objects are located and how they are oriented to the main axes of the image. We present an example Marching Pixels algorithm and corresponding application-specific and programmable architectures designed for the use in embedded systems. The strengths and weaknesses of those architectures concerning the realization as FPGAs and ASICs are discussed by means of hardware synthesis results.