An architecture for a VLSI sensory-motor system for autonomous robots

An architecture for a VLSI sensory-motor system is presented. It makes use of ideas from behavior-based robotics and biology to achieve an obstacle avoidance behavior in an unstructured environment. Sensory-motor coordination is achieved by correlating a map of the visual field with a map which represents the robot's body. Rapid decision making is facilitated by a post-receptor foveation scheme which permits the fixation of the open pathway and the localization of obstacles through spatial gradients. The foveation scheme uniquely combines space-variant processing with the possibility for high-resolution, per-pixel spatio-temporal operations across the focal plane. Only a small number of computationally simple operations are used per-pixel, potentially leading to implementations with small pixels and high fill-factors.