A Functionally Distributed Vision System For Parallel Image Understanding

In this paper, we describe the design of a functionally distributed multiple array processor system for parallel vision processing. This new architecture blends the power of associative processor for performing fast information retrievals with the capability of cellular array processor to process various tasks in parallel. The pixel-based image resides in an Iconic Array Processor(IAP), and the symbolized image resides in a Symbolic Array Processor (SAP). The transfer from iconic to symbolic is accomplished by a Mapping Multi-Processor(MM P). The capabilities of this system allow for feedback between high and low level processing and also support the parallel processing for mapping the pixel-based representation of an image into a symbolic representation(a semantic network) used for high-level vision processing.