Image Acquisition Metadata Sync for Moving Object Tracking
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing image-processing devices face challenges in synchronizing image acquisition and lighting adjustments, particularly with non-standard sensors and lighting systems, leading to latency, poor convergence time, and decreased performance when tracking moving objects.
Innovation Solution
An image-processing device with a synchronous data-processing system that time-stamps adjustment data and associates it with acquired images as metadata, allowing asynchronous processing to synchronize and adjust image and lighting systems independently, using a real-time coprocessor and non-real-time processor architecture.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a non-real-time operating system is used to apply AGC parameters, then the device can handle multiple functionalities, but the synchronization between image acquisition and parameter application becomes uncertain, leading to increased latency and slower convergence time
Solution Approach 1:
The system is divided into two independent processing paths: a real-time path for image acquisition and parameter application, and a non-real-time path for AGC computation and device control functionalities. This segmentation allows each path to operate optimally without compromising the other, maintaining both versatility and real-time performance.
Solution Approach 2:
A synchronization mechanism acts as an intermediary between the real-time and non-real-time paths. It uses timestamped metadata to correlate images with their corresponding adjustment parameters, ensuring accurate matching without requiring the non-real-time AGC computations to block or delay the real-time image acquisition stream.
2Reliability
If a delay of multiple frames is added to ensure parameter application, then synchronization reliability improves, but the AGC loop becomes much slower and tracking performance decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the mechanical time-based delay approach with a data-based association approach using timestamped metadata. Instead of waiting for a fixed number of frames to pass, the system uses the metadata to directly associate each image with its corresponding adjustment parameters, achieving reliable synchronization instantaneously without artificial delays.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent adds a temporal dimension through timestamp metadata, allowing the system to correlate images and parameters across different time points without requiring them to be processed sequentially. This enables the AGC loop to operate at full speed while maintaining accurate synchronization through time-stamped data association.
3Speed
If standard ISP is used for real-time parameter application, then response time is fast, but it cannot handle non-standard sensors such as RGB-IR sensors requiring dedicated adjustment
Solution Approach 1:
The system employs a universal parameter application mechanism that can handle both standard and non-standard sensors through a common interface. The adjustment parameters are defined in a sensor-agnostic format that can be applied to various sensor types including RGB-IR sensors, while the specific parameter interpretations are adapted through software configuration rather than requiring dedicated hardware paths for each sensor type.
Data Source
AI summary
A device that includes an image-acquiring system, a synchronous data-processing system that receives setpoints including at least one image-acquisition setpoint, and that determines, depending on at least one of the setpoints, adjustment data of the acquiring system, said synchronous system comprising a synchronous time-stamping means that time stamps, on acquisition, one of the adjustment data of the acquiring system, a means for associating one of the time-stamped adjustment data of the image-acquiring system with said image acquired at the moment of acquisition of the image by adding metadata to said image, an asynchronous system for processing said image with associated metadata, which generates and sends to the synchronous system the setpoints, the image-acquisition setpoint being determined based on an acquired image with associated metadata.