Progress of Materials and Devices for Neuromorphic Vision Sensors

The latest developments in bio-inspired neuromorphic vision sensors can be summarized in 3 keywords:smaller,faster,and smarter.(1)Smaller:Devices are becoming more compact by integrating previously separated components such as sensors,memory,and processing units.As a prime example,the transition from traditional sensory vision computing to in-sensor vision computing has shown clear benefits,such as simpler circuitry,lower power consumption,and less data redundancy.(2)Swifter:Owing to the nature of physics,smaller and more integrated devices can detect,process,and react to input more quickly.In addition,the methods for sensing and processing optical information using various materials(such as oxide semiconductors)are evolving.(3)Smarter:Owing to these two main research directions,we can expect advanced applications such as adaptive vision sensors,collision sensors,and nociceptive sensors.This review mainly focuses on the recent progress,working mechanisms,image pre-processing techniques,and advanced features of two types of neuromorphic vision sensors based on near-sensor and in-sensor vision computing methodologies.

Neuromorphic vision sensors: Principle, progress and perspectives

Conventional frame-based image sensors suffer greatly from high energy consumption and latency.Mimicking neurobiological structures and functionalities of the retina provides a promising way to build a neuromorphic vision sensor with highly efficient image processing.In this review article,we will start with a brief introduction to explain the working mechanism and the challenges of conventional frame-based image sensors,and introduce the structure and functions of biological retina.In the main section,we will overview recent developments in neuromorphic vision sensors,including the silicon retina based on conventional Si CMOS digital technologies,and the neuromorphic vision sensors with the implementation of emerging devices.Finally,we will provide a brief outline of the prospects and outlook for the development of this field.

NeuroBiometric:An Eye Blink Based Biometric Authentication System Using an Event-Based Neuromorphic Vision Sensor

The rise of the Internet and identity authentication systems has brought convenience to people's lives but has also introduced the potential risk of privacy leaks.Existing biometric authentication systems based on explicit and static features bear the risk of being attacked by mimicked data.This work proposes a highly efficient biometric authentication system based on transient eye blink signals that are precisely captured by a neuromorphic vision sensor with microsecond-level temporal resolution.The neuromorphic vision sensor only transmits the local pixel-level changes induced by the eye blinks when they occur,which leads to advantageous characteristics such as an ultra-low latency response.We first propose a set of effective biometric features describing the motion,speed,energy and frequency signal of eye blinks based on the microsecond temporal resolution of event densities.We then train the ensemble model and non-ensemble model with our Neuro Biometric dataset for biometrics authentication.The experiments show that our system is able to identify and verify the subjects with the ensemble model at an accuracy of 0.948 and with the non-ensemble model at an accuracy of 0.925.The low false positive rates(about 0.002)and the highly dynamic features are not only hard to reproduce but also avoid recording visible characteristics of a user's appearance.The proposed system sheds light on a new path towards safer authentication using neuromorphic vision sensors.

Low-dimensional optoelectronic synaptic devices for neuromorphic vision sensors

Neuromorphic systems represent a promising avenue for the development of the next generation of artificial intelligence hardware.Machine vision,one of the cores in artificial intelligence,requires system-level support with low power consumption,low latency,and parallel computing.Neuromorphic vision sensors provide an efficient solution for machine vision by simulating the structure and function of the biological retina.Optoelectronic synapses,which use light as the main means to achieve the dual functions of photosensitivity and synapse,are the basic units of the neuromorphic vision sensor.Therefore,it is necessary to develop various optoelectronic synaptic devices to expand the application scenarios of neuromorphic vision systems.This review compares the structure and function for both biological and artificial retina systems,and introduces various optoelectronic synaptic devices based on low-dimensional materials and working mechanisms.In addition,advanced applications of optoelectronic synapses as neuromorphic vision sensors are comprehensively summarized.Finally,the challenges and prospects in this field are briefly discussed.