Function-oriented vision chips for factory automation

The emphasis is on high-speed processor architectures for visual processing. There are, in general, two types of high-speed processor architectures: highly programmable processors and function-oriented processors. Function-oriented processors are discussed. The author describes research trends in function-oriented industrial vision chips. Vision chips are categorized into digital, analog, and hybrid chips, which are discussed. It is expected that higher-level visual processing will get more attention for vision chips in the future while many current vision chips address early vision technologies or low-level visual processing. A key in extending early vision capabilities to high-level visual capabilities is the fusion of information from multiple imperfect visual recognition subsystems