Evgeni Gousev, Senior Director at Qualcomm Research, presents the "Always-On Vision Becomes a Reality" tutorial at the May 2017 Embedded Vision Summit.
Intelligent devices equipped with human-like senses such as always-on touch, audio and motion detection have enabled a variety of new use cases and applications, transforming the way we interact with each other and our surroundings. While the vast majority (more than 80%) of human insight comes through the eyes, enabling always-on vision (defined as sub-1 mA current draw) for devices is challenging due to power-hungry hardware and the high complexity of inference algorithms.
Qualcomm Research has pioneered an Always-on Computer Vision Module (CVM) combining innovations in the system architecture, ultra-low power design and dedicated hardware for vision algorithms running at the “edge”. With low end-to-end power consumption, a tiny form factor and low cost, the CVM can be integrated into a wide range of battery- and line-powered devices (IoT, mobile, VR/AR, automotive, etc.), performing object detection, feature recognition, change/motion detection, and other tasks. Its processor performs all computation within the module itself and outputs metadata.