Design of a DSP-based CMOS Imaging System for Embedded Computer Vision

With the advance of image processing techniques and the fast reduction of image sensor costs, embedded computer vision is becoming a reality. This paper presents the design and implementation of an integrated CMOS imaging system based on DM642. The system can acquire VGA resolution image at 100frame/s. The on-board 10Mbps Ethernet connection and the UART as well as digital I/O ports provide convenience for direct interface to other intelligent devices. The on-board software provides image acquisition function, network-based control, network-based data transfer, JPEG compression, image preprocessing functions, edge detection function. Automatic exposure control and automatic white balance are realized in the system. Experiments show that the CMOS imaging system has a good performance in terms of imaging quality, with much potential for being used as intelligent vision system.