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Vision is one of the most important senses to animals, for to interact with the world, almost all but few simple animals need to know what is present at a distance in the world and where it is. Seeing is particularly vital to fast flying animals like insects; they rely on their sense of sight for landing on a target, chasing a mate, or escaping a predator. Vision is a complex function which comprises many information processing tasks. One early and fundamental visual task is the processing of visual motion information, which is a prerequisite to many other brain functions, perception of depth, segregation of objects, stabilization of flight course, and avoidance of obstacles.
In order to effectively use motion information it is necessary to first detect it very reliably, under a wide variety of input conditions. The motion detection mechanisms of insects have been under investigation for many years. In this seminar we present models of the elementary movement detection mechanism of insects. Such models possess very useful adaptive properties, which allow them to operate over a wide dynamic range, while reducing the hardware requirements when compared to more conventional sensor architectures. We will also describe a smart vision micro-sensor that integrates the image sensor with the motion detector and processor on a VLSI chip the size of a five-cent coin.
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