Image Signal Processor for Artificial Intelligence

Karthick Kumaran Ayyalluseshagiri Viswanathan, Karthik Poduval

Abstract: Cameras have become very common in most consumer electronics and industrial products like mobile phones, augmented/virtual reality headsets, tablets, robotics, drones, automobiles, door cameras. There are two types of cameras in most consumer electronic products, one used for human consumption which requires high quality visually appealing images and another used for computer vision applications powered by various deep learning models. High quality visually appealing images for human consumption have to undergo rigorous image signal processing for improving the quality of the captured image or video whereas the images produced for the computer vision tasks doesn?t have to be enhanced in quality as the algorithms can be trained to operate without any image enhancement. In this paper, we will introduce the lightweight ISP for the various computer vision tasks and the benefits of that.

Keywords: Cameras, ISP, Computer vision, Deep Learning, DMA, MIPI, CSI, Artificial Intelligence