Multi-chip implementation of a biomimetic VLSI vision sensor based on the Adelson-Bergen algorithm

Biological motion sensors found in the retinas of species ranging from flies to primates are tuned to specific spatio-temporal frequencies to determine the local motion vectors in their visual field and perform complex motion computations. In this study, we present a novel implementation of a silicon retina based on the Adelson-Bergen spatio-temporal energy model of primate cortical cells. By employing a multi-chip strategy, we successfully implemented the model without much sacrifice of the fill factor of the photoreceptors in the front-end chip. In addition, the characterization results proved that this spatio-temporal frequency tuned silicon retina can detect the direction of motion of a sinusoidal input grating down to 10 percent contrast, and over more than a magnitude in velocity. This multi-chip biomimetic vision sensor will allow complex visual motion computations to be performed in real-time.