A Programmable , Wide Dynamic Range CMOS Imager with On-Chip Automatic Exposure Control Personnel

Machine vision requires an image sensor able to capture natural scenes which may have a dynamic range as high as four orders of magnitude. Reported wide dynamic range image sensors suffer from some or all of the following problems: large silicon area, high cost, low spatial resolution, small dynamic range increase factor, poor pixel sensitivity, small intensity resolution, etc. The primary focus of this research is to develop a single-chip imager for machine vision applications which addresses these problems, but is still able to provide an ultra wide intensity dynamic range by implementing a novel pixelby-pixel automatic exposure control. The secondary focus of the research is to make the imager programmable, so that its performance (light intensity dynamic range, spatial resolution, light intensity resolution, frame rate, etc.) can be tailored to suit a particular machine vision application.