Introduction to the Special Issue on Embedded Systems for Computer Vision

Abstract

We provide a broad overview of some of the current research directions at the intersection of embedded systems and computer vision, in addition to intro-ducing the papers appearing in this special issue. Work at this intersection is steadily growing in importance, especially in the context of autonomous and cyber-physical systems design. Vision-based perception is almost a mandatory component in any autonomous system, but also adds myriad challenges like, how to efficiently implement vision processing algorithms on resource-constrained embedded architectures, and how to verify the functional and timing correctness of these algorithms. Computer vision is also crucial in implementing various smart functionality like security, e.g., using facial recognition, or monitoring events or traffic patterns. Some of these applications are reviewed in this introductory article. The remaining articles featured in this special issue dive into more depth on a few of them.