The Bi-i is a small sized, stand-alone image capturing and processing unit. Its primary image-capturing devices are two pieces of ACE16k focal plane array sensor and processor chips developed in the framework of the DICTAM project. The special feature of this ACE16k chip is that it can capture and process up to 10,000 images in a second, which is absolutely unique in the image-processing field.
In addition to the ACE16k, the system contains two other processors. The first is a high performance Texas Instruments Fixed-point Digital Signal Processing Unit (DSP). The DSP is used to control the focal plane array chip and to perform post-processing after the ACE16k array processor does the computational hungry pre-processing. The other one is a digital processor chip, which is responsible for the communication. This chip, running under an embedded Linux, drives the Ethernet (RJ-45), serial (RS232) and USB communication channels and is responsible for the stable handling of the network.
The system can be programmed through either C/C++ or a low-level script language. These programs are executed on the DSP. To reduce application development effort, an image-processing library was also developed.