Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Other

Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha

Panasonic Corporation

Melexis Tessenderlo N.v.

Smal Camera Technologies, Inc.

Ichiro Masaki

Masahito Takagi

Keith Glen Fife

Anantha P Chandrakasan

Hiroyuki Koike

Vivek A Sikri

Berthold K P Horn

Berthold K Horn

Ichiro Mizunuma

Yajun Fang

Yoichi Sugimoto

Sumio Yokomitsu

Charles G Sodini

Shugo Kondo

Lane Gearle Brooks

Izumi Kondo

Shingo Ogawa

Marcelo M Mizuki

Ujjaval Desai

Nilesh Agarwalla

Pablo M Acosta-Serafini

A system and method adaptively control sensitivity, on a pixel-by-pixel basis, of a digital imager. An illumination intensity level mapping controller determines a number of pixels of image data having illumination intensity levels within a first defined range of illumination intensity levels and determines an illumination intensity level mapping function based upon the determined number of pixels within the first defined range of illumination intensity levels. An exposure controller determines a number of pixels having illumination intensity levels within a second defined range of illumination intensity levels and determines an integration time based upon the determined number of pixels having illumination intensity levels within the second defined range of illumination intensity levels. A transfer control function generation circuit determines a composite transfer control function based on the determined integration time and determined illumination intensity level mapping function; determines each transition point between a plurality of discrete transfer control functions from the determined integration time and the determined illumination intensity level mapping function; and imposes the determined transfer control function upon a pixel of the digital imager.

Adaptive sensitivity control, on a pixel-by-pixel basis, for a digital imager

An object tracking apparatus includes a buffer unit that is configured to store picture information, an object position detecting unit that detects positional information of an object from the picture information, an object region detecting unit that detects a region of the object in the picture information based on the positional information, a storage unit that detects a feature properties of the object located in the region and stores the positional information, the feature properties and the region of the object, a predicting unit that predicts a position of the object of the next frame in the picture information from the position information, a determining unit that determines a predictive area of the next frame where the region is to be moved based on the position of the object of the next frame, and a verifying unit that verifies the feature properties of the object within the predictive area of the next frame and outputs a most resemble region.

Object tracking method and object tracking apparatus

A time-to-contact estimation device for estimating a time to contact of a moving body to an object in surroundings of the moving body, includes: an image sensor provided on the moving body, and continuously capturing time-varying images of the surroundings of the moving body; a brightness change calculation unit calculating brightness changes in pixels between the time-varying images captured one after another; and a time-to-contact calculation unit calculating optimized brightness gradients based on the brightness changes calculated by the brightness change calculation unit, and calculating the time to contact of the moving body to the object based on the optimized brightness gradients.

Time-to-contact estimation device and method for estimating time to contact

A support apparatus for sense of vision includes: a filter device that extracts low frequency components, and respective high frequency components in at least a horizontal direction and a vertical direction from original images obtained by image capture by a plurality of image pickup devices, a frequency component combining device that combines the low frequency components of each of the original images extracted by the filter device to generate a combined low frequency component, and combines the high frequency components of each of the original images extracted by the filter device in at least the horizontal direction and the vertical direction to generate a combined horizontal high frequency component and a combined vertical high frequency component; and a composite image formation device that combines the low combined frequency component, the combined horizontal high frequency component, and the combined vertical high frequency component, generated by the frequency component combining device, to generate a composite image.

System and method for creating composite images

An area is imaged with a non-standard aspect ratio, e.g. wide aspect ratio, digital imager to produce pixels of image data. At least a portion of the produced pixels of image data corresponding to the captured non-standard aspect ratio image is displayed beginning, for a given frame of pixels of image data, at a column of pixels of image data corresponding to a predetermined column of imaged pixels. The number of columns of display pixels is different than the number of columns of imaged pixels. Motion is detected in the imaged pixels so that a motion responsive portion of the imaged pixels corresponding to the captured non-standard aspect ratio image corresponding to a window of the imaged pixels having motion detected therein can be displayed.

System and method for displaying a non-standard aspect ratio image on a standard aspect ratio monitor

An integrated network gives priority to message traffic associated with a first network over message traffic associated with a second network. This arrangement allows a private network, such an emergency network, to be integrated with a public network, such as a cellular network, while preventing the cellular network traffic from blocking emergency network traffic. Lower priority connections can be preempted by higher priority connections. The integrated network can migrate a request from a first node to a neighboring node and can re-route a connection around a failed link.

Integrated network system

The imager system of the invention, provided in a semiconductor substrate, includes a plurality of photosensitive, charge integrating pixels that are arranged in rows and columns of a pixel array for capturing illumination of a scene to be imaged. Each pixel includes a photogenerated charge accumulation region of the semiconductor substrate and a sense node at which an electrical signal, indicative of pixel charge accumulation, can be measured without discharging the accumulation region. Pixel access control circuitry is connected to pixel array rows and columns to deliver pixel access signals generated by the access control circuitry for independently accessing a selected pixel in the array. An input interface circuit is connected to accept a dynamic range specification input for the array pixels. Integration control circuitry is connected to access a selected pixel of the array to read the sense node electrical signal of the selected pixel, and configured to generate pixel-specific integration control signals delivered to the selected pixel, independent of other pixels, based on dynamic range specification input provided by the input interface circuit. An output interface circuit is connected to the pixel array to produce output image data based on sense node electrical signals from the pixel array.

Single-chip imager system with programmable dynamic range

A traffic accident recording system, wherein a recording unit is provided along a road, comprising a TV camera for continously obtaining visual images of a certain section of the road and a storage unit for continuously storing the visual images from the TV camera, and an accident recognition unit provided in a vehicle which upon occurrence of an accident transmits a trigger signal to the recording unit so that the storage unit retains visual images of the section of the road whereat the accident occurred at specified time durations before, during and after the occurrence of the accident. Thereafter, the stored visual images can be accessed and stored for later use. Also devices are provided for periodically discarding visual images not used.

Traffic accident recording system

A priority controlled network wherein a plurality of sensor terminals, at least one display terminal, and control circuit are interconnected by a network, and within each sensor terminal is a priority determining unit to which are supplied data from one or more sensors in the sensor terminal, and parameters controlling the priority determining from the control circuit, whereby priority determining by said priority determining unit is obtained by using said data and said parameters so that a particular priority value is determined for each of the plurality of sensor terminals and selected priority value data are displayed in the at least one display terminal and capacity of said network is optimally used where more than one display terminal is provided.

Priority controlled network

An improved traffic accident preventing system to alarm both a driver on vehicle and pedestrian each other using a radio communication unit when they are located close. This system also provides a traffic monitoring and control system using communication between vehicle, pedestrian with communication unit and radio unit equipped by roadside, in which a traffic management center can send information to a specific vehicle and pedestrian with communication unit, and also receive information from them.

Traffic system to prevent from accidents

A road surface monitoring system for monitoring the condition of a road surface wherein at least one sensor unit is interchangeably provided in a sealed container disposed below the road surface and a power source is provided to power the sensor unit, and a communications device is provided to obtain measurement and/or monitoring data from the at least one sensor unit and to provide control signals to the at least one sensor unit, whereby an inexpensive and readily maintainable system is provided.

Road surface condition monitoring system using sensors disposed under the road

A traffic monitoring, driver assistance, and communications system includes lane terminals arranged along a direction of travel of a highway, each lane terminal including a sensor for detecting passage of a vehicle, a communication antenna, a terminal transceiver for communicating with a passing vehicle through the communication antenna, and a network backbone linking the lane terminals to a data processor for compiling information on passing vehicles sensed. The system permits complex toll assessment on toll roads. By using a larger number of short range antennas, cellular communication is possible with a very large number of moving vehicles without increasing bandwidth because the cells are relatively small.

Integrated traffic monitoring assistance, and communications system

A method and apparatus for motion estimation in a video signal includes an edge detector for generating present and reference binary edge bit maps and a binary block matcher for receiving the present and reference binary edge bit maps from the edge detector and for generating a motion vector for each of a plurality of blocks in the binary edge bit maps. By using binary edge bit map data to generate motion vectors, computational requirements are reduced. If the apparatus is provided as an integrated circuit, the technique of the present invention reduces cost, power requirements and size of the integrated circuit.

Method and apparatus for motion estimation in a video signal

Edge or contour information is extracted from an image array by filtering and encoded. In order to improve reproduction accuracy, two separate filters are used to detect edge information. One of the filters detects 'sharp' edges, or edges in which the discontinuity in pixel intensity values occurs over a range of a few pixels. The other filter detects 'level' edges in which the pixel intensity value discontinuity occurs over a larger range of pixels than the 'sharp' edges. The 'smooth' areas between edges or contours are assumed to vary continuously between the contours, but for efficient implementation, a one-dimensional linear interpolation is used to regenerate the contour information between edges. In addition, to further improve performance, a line is fitted to the pixel intensity data. The end values of this line are then used for the pixel intensity data. In order to still further improve performance, the pixel intensity values associated with each contour are divided into groups and each group is then encoded. Another improvement is accomplished by mean coding the residual error.

Growing community of inventors

Boxborough, MA, United States of America

Ichiro Masaki