Supporting fast interactions within a heterogeneous vision system including a programmable retina

The present level of VLSI technology allows the design of reasonably large FPAs in which each photodetector is associated with a processing structure. Furthermore this structure might be programmable, turning the FPA into an image processing architecture with parallel optical input. With the advent of such devices, dramatic on sensor information concentration may be obtained as well as ultrafast reactions, thanks to the rapprochement between phototransduction and processing operators. How to take full advantage of these remarkable abilities within vision systems raise architectural problems which are addressed here both conceptually and experimentally.