SBIR Phase I: Reflectance Sensitive Image Sensor for Illumination-Invariant Visual Perception

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0339971This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project proposes to develop an adaptive CMOS image sensor that estimates and largely eliminates illumination variations in sensed optical images thus reporting electronic images that are indicative of the reflectance of the viewed scene. Most present and future vision applications including automotive, biometric, security, and mobile computing applications operate in unconstrained environments and have to cope with unknown and widely varying illumination conditions. The proposed research has a potential to broadly impact computer vision performance and reliability. The core innovation is in a signal processing technique for estimating the illumination field from sensed images. The technique efficiently implements as a dense on-chip massively parallel analog processor distributed among the photodetectors to produce a reflectance sensitive image sensor.Image sensors are rapidly finding their way into cars, cell-phones, personal digital assistants, medical and diagnostic equipment, automated drug discovery, cutting edge security, surveillance and biometric systems. To fully realize the potential of electronic imaging in society, the image sensors will need to adapt and provide useful images most of the time even under the harshest of illumination conditions. The proposed research will make this possible and make people.s lives safer, more productive and more enjoyable.