Analog computation of image chromaticity

This paper presents the design and implementation of a new analog real-time color space converter using off-the-shelf chips, which performs the transformation of the RGB color coordinates, obtained from a color sensor, to the RGB normalized color coordinates. The RGB color coordinates are relatively insensitive to light intensity variations, hence contributing to simplified segmentation. The module is intended to be used as the front end of color machine vision systems in inspection tasks and in autonomous applications, where the need for short processing times is crucial. Experimental results exhibiting the usefulness of the proposed color space converter are also presented. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.