Patent ID: 7532244

Claim:
A high-speed vision sensor, comprising: a photodetector array having a plurality of photodetectors, which are arranged two-dimensionally; an analog-to-digital converting device that converts, into digital signals, analog signals which are outputted from the photodetectors in the photodetector array; a parallel processing system including a parallel processing element array, the parallel processing element array having a plurality of processing elements which are arranged two-dimensionally in a plurality of rows and in a plurality of columns, each processing element performing a predetermined calculation on digital signals which are transferred from the analog-to-digital converting device; a column-direction data-transfer bus including a plurality of column-direction data-transfer data lines which are arranged in one to one correspondence with the plurality of columns in the parallel processing system, each column-direction data-transfer data line being connected to the processing elements that are located in the corresponding column and performing data transfer operation with each processing element in the corresponding column; a row-direction data-transfer bus including a plurality of row-direction data-transfer data lines which are arranged in one to one correspondence with the plurality of rows in the parallel processing system, each row-direction data-transfer data line being connected to the processing elements that are located in the corresponding row and performing data transfer operation with each processing element in the corresponding row; and a control circuit controlling the photodetector array, the analog-to-digital converting device, the parallel processing system, the column-direction data-transfer bus, and the row-direction data-transfer bus, and performing data transfer operation with the processing elements via the column-direction data-transfer bus and the row-direction data-transfer bus, the control circuit controlling a combination of data to be transferred via each column-direction data-transfer data line to the corresponding processing elements and data to be transferred via each row-direction data-transfer data line to the corresponding processing elements, thereby controlling each processing element to perform a processing that is determined based on the combination of data received from the corresponding column-direction data-transfer data line and data received from the corresponding row-direction data-transfer data line.