Optoelectronic implementation of cellular automata for complex vision algorithms

In this work, we elaborate on the compromise between the efficiency of the multiprocessor computer architecture for handling large classes of computing tasks and the good performance of optics for implementing shift invariant operations, in particular convolution. We derive a class of processors, optoelectronic cellular automata that can efficiently implement intensive, low level vision tasks in a time compatible with application constraints up to standard video rates. As one illustration, a parallel simulated annealing task performing motion detection on an image sequence is demonstrated.