Of all our human senses, we rely most on our sense of sight to interact with the world. As we incorporate embedded processors into everyday products to make them more intelligent, we can imbue them as well with this powerful capability. To date, however, machine vision has only achieved success in manufacturing facilities where lighting and scene variation are strictly controlled. Seeing in the real world is harder.

The challenge to seeing is to view the world in real-time in three dimensions and color. Technology developed by Tyzx performs the task on a single IC, the DeepSea, at rates that outstrip the fastest CPUs.

Embedding the DeepSea with commodity CMOS imagers and a general-purpose processor creates a smart 3D sensor. Smart 3D sensors enable new applications from automotive obstacle avoidance and occupant sensing to new interactive video games. Networks of smart 3D sensors create a distributed, self-configuring, scalable sensor capable of observing and integrating events over a large area. Such networks can be used to track people in large, crowded, dynamic environments such as airports.

CS547 Human-Computer Interaction Seminar (Seminar on People, Computers, and Design)