A 100 GOPS vision platform for intelligent vehicles

New generations of automobiles will include driver assistance systems requiring powerful, low-cost processors to handle video/camera applications and to enable fast, convenient application development. Here, the Corporate Research Division of Infineon Technologies is working on a 100 GOPS vehicle vision platform, which consists of a fully programmable, general purpose vision processor, a convenient software environment based on "C" and the integration of advanced application software. The paper motivates Infineons' approach to vehicle vision systems, presents a brief description of the vision processor, and explains, as examples for application integration, a contour-based approach for an "overtake-checker" and a "door-opener" assistant.