This project is no longer active. Circuitry for neural computations is integrated with a photosensor array using VLSI in order to directly sense road-image information. While an image sensor generates vast amounts of data, only a small fraction of the information is relevant.
Human drivers use their experience to extract needed information from what they see.
Through a training process, the network learns to filter out image details not relevant to driving. The resulting computational sensor intelligently extracts relevant information from raw image input at the point of sensing. The bottleneck between image input and computer, present in traditional system implementations, is eliminated. In addition, computational sensors are compact, rugged and cost-effective because they are implemented on a monolithic silicon substrate. Much higher frame rates are required to obtain further gains in the speed and performance of the driving task.