Sensing devices interact in complex environments, and their miniaturization and portability call for small form factor and low power consumption. Edge AI is therefore of fundamental importance for robustness, privacy, and long battery operation. The application of AI algorithms to image sensors further constraints technological solutions in resources due to the large amount of generated data.
The objective of this project is to design and prototype a digital circuit that implements a parallel HW/SW architecture aimed at solving specific sensing use cases with high efficiency in area and power. The candidate will tackle the challenges with a multidisciplinary point of view, focusing on the analysis of a proposed HW/SW architecture and the design of a digital prototype.
The key technical activities that will be covered are:
Implementation of a prototype design in a mixed hardware/software platform (which might include PC, SoC, FPGAs, integrated circuits).
Simulations of the system behavior in target scenarios.
Characterization of the developed system in the lab and on the field.
The candidate will meet regularly with an industrial advisor from Sony EYDC and will spend a research period of six months at the company, providing a unique opportunity to interact with experts in the fields of computer vision and CMOS image sensors. The expected outcome is a highly optimized architecture for an imaging system that combines software, firmware, and hardware solutions to solve specific, market-driven needs in the consumer electronics, automotive, smart city, robotics, and digital industry fields. The intellectual property of the research results that will derive from the activities carried out by the doctoral candidate is owned by FBK and SONY ETDC.