This book provides a thorough overview of the state-of-the-art field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based robotic computing accelerator designs and summarizes their adopted optimized techniques. This book consists of ten chapters, delving into the details of how FPGAs have been utilized in robotic perception, localization, planning, and multi-robot collaboration tasks. In addition to individual robotic tasks, this book provides detailed descriptions of how FPGAs have been used in robotic products, including commercial autonomous vehicles and space exploration robots.

This book provides a thorough overview of the state-of-the-art field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based robotic computing accelerator designs and summarizes their adopted optimized techniques. This book consists of ten chapters, delving into the details of how FPGAs have been utilized in robotic perception, localization, planning, and multi-robot collaboration tasks. In addition to individual robotic tasks, this book provides detailed descriptions of how FPGAs have been used in robotic products, including commercial autonomous vehicles and space exploration robots.

This book provides a thorough overview of the state-of-the-art field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based robotic computing accelerator designs and summarizes their adopted optimized techniques. This book consists of ten chapters, delving into the details of how FPGAs have been utilized in robotic perception, localization, planning, and multi-robot collaboration tasks. In addition to individual robotic tasks, this book provides detailed descriptions of how FPGAs have been used in robotic products, including commercial autonomous vehicles and space exploration robots.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Applied Reconfigurable Computing, ARC 2009, held in Karlsruhe, Germany, in March 2009. The 21 full papers and 21 short papers presented together with the abstracts of 3 keynote lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from about 100 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on FPGA security and bitstream analysis, fault tolerant systems, architectures, place and route techniques, cryptography, and resource allocation and scheduling, as well as on applications.

Dr Donald Bailey starts with introductory material considering the problem of embedded image processing, and how some of the issues may be solved using parallel hardware solutions. Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are introduced as a technology that provides flexible, fine-grained hardware that can readily exploit parallelism within many image processing algorithms. A brief review of FPGA programming languages provides the link between a software mindset normally associated with image processing algorithms, and the hardware mindset required for efficient utilization of a parallel hardware design. The design process for implementing an image processing algorithm on an FPGA is compared with that for a conventional software implementation, with the key differences highlighted. Particular attention is given to the techniques for mapping an algorithm onto an FPGA implementation, considering timing, memory bandwidth and resource constraints, and efficient hardware computational techniques. Extensive coverage is given of a range of low and intermediate level image processing operations, discussing efficient implementations and how these may vary according to the application. The techniques are illustrated with several example applications or case studies from projects or applications he has been involved with. Issues such as interfacing between the FPGA and peripheral devices are covered briefly, as is designing the system in such a way that it can be more readily debugged and tuned. Provides a bridge between algorithms and hardware Demonstrates how to avoid many of the potential pitfalls Offers practical recommendations and solutions Illustrates several real-world applications and case studies Allows those with software backgrounds to understand efficient hardware implementation Design for Embedded Image Processing on FPGAs is ideal for researchers and engineers in the vision or image processing industry, who are looking at smart sensors, machine vision, and robotic vision, as well as FPGA developers and application engineers. The book can also be used by graduate students studying imaging systems, computer engineering, digital design, circuit design, or computer science. It can also be used as supplementary text for courses in advanced digital design, algorithm and hardware implementation, and digital signal processing and applications. Companion website for the book: www.wiley.com/go/bailey/fpga

Robotics and control are both research and application domains that have been frequently engineered through the use of interdisciplinary approaches like cybernetics. Cognition is a particular concept of this approach, abstracted from the context of living organisms to that of artificial devices, and is concerned with knowledge acquisition and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. Cognitive robotics and control refer to knowledge processing as much as knowledge generation from problem understanding, leading to special forms of architectures that enable systems to behave in an autonomous way. The main aim of this book is to highlight emerging applications and address recent breakthroughs in the domain of cognitive robotics and control and related areas. Procedures, algorithms, architectures, and implementations for reasoning, problem solving, or decision making are considered in the domain of robotics and control.

During the 1980s and early 1990s there was signi?cant work in the design and implementation of hardware neurocomputers. Nevertheless, most of these efforts may be judged to have been unsuccessful: at no time have have ha- ware neurocomputers been in wide use. This lack of success may be largely attributed to the fact that earlier work was almost entirely aimed at developing custom neurocomputers, based on ASIC technology, but for such niche - eas this technology was never suf?ciently developed or competitive enough to justify large-scale adoption. On the other hand, gate-arrays of the period m- tioned were never large enough nor fast enough for serious arti?cial-neur- network (ANN) applications. But technology has now improved: the capacity and performance of current FPGAs are such that they present a much more realistic alternative. Consequently neurocomputers based on FPGAs are now a much more practical proposition than they have been in the past. This book summarizes some work towards this goal and consists of 12 papers that were selected, after review, from a number of submissions. The book is nominally divided into three parts: Chapters 1 through 4 deal with foundational issues; Chapters 5 through 11 deal with a variety of implementations; and Chapter 12 looks at the lessons learned from a large-scale project and also reconsiders design issues in light of current and future technology.