The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 15, 1993
Filed:
Sep. 28, 1990
Berthold K Horn, Carlisle, MA (US);
David L Standley, Cambridge, MA (US);
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (US);
Abstract
An analog VLSI microchip which uses moments to determine the position and orientation of an object in a scene is disclosed. The imaging sensors are implemented on the chip itself using standard fabrication processes. The method allows very high speed computation in a small, low cost, and low power device. The first moments determine the centroid of the image, which provides the position. The second moments, together with the first moments, determine the axis of least inertia, which provides the orientation. The method uses a resistive grid with nodes containing intensity data (in the form of voltages) corresponding to the image. The moment extraction method is a two-stage dimensional reduction of data. First, the two-dimensional array of intensity data is reduced to a one-dimensional array of data (in the form of currents) by the resistive grid. Second, the one-dimensional data array, which is available at the periphery of the grid, is reduced to a data vector, the size of which is independent of the grid size.