Address-event imagers for sensor networks: evaluation and modeling

Although imaging is an information-rich sensing modality, the use of cameras in sensor networks is very often prohibited by factors such as power, computation cost, storage, communication bandwidth and privacy. In this paper we consider information selective and privacy-preserving address-event imagers for sensor networks. Instead of providing full images with a high degree of redundancy, our efforts in the design of these imagers specialize on selecting a handful of features from a scene and outputting these features in address-event representation. In this paper we present our initial results in modeling and evaluating address-event sensors in the context of sensor networks. Using three different platforms that we have developed, we illustrate how to model address-event cameras and how to build an emulator using these models. We also present a lightweight classification scheme to illustrate the computational advantages of address-event sensors. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the classification algorithm and a feasibility study of using COTS components to emulate address-event inside a sensor network.