Fast FPGA-Based Image Feature Extraction for Data Fusion in Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

Computer vision plays a critical role in many applications, particularly in the domain of autonomous vehicles. To achieve high-level image processing tasks such as image classification and object tracking, it is essential to extract low-level features from the image data. However, in order to integrate these compute-intensive tasks into a control loop, they must be completed as quickly as possible. This paper presents a novel FPGA-based system for fast and accurate image feature extraction, specifically designed to meet the constraints of data fusion in autonomous vehicles. The system computes a set of generic statistical image features, including contrast, homogeneity, and entropy, and is implemented on two Xilinx FPGA platforms - an Alveo U200 Data Center Accelerator Card and a Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC ZCU104 Evaluation Kit. Experimental results show that the proposed system achieves high-speed image feature extraction with low latency, making it well-suited for use in autonomous vehicle systems that require real-time image processing. The presented system can also be easily extended to extract additional features for various image and data fusion applications.