A convolutional neural network accelerator for real-time underwater image recognition of autonomous underwater vehicle

• Published in: Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Part I, Journal of systems and control engineering Journal of systems and control engineering, 2021-11, Vol.235 (10), p.1839-1848
• Main Authors: Zhao, Wanting, Qi, Hong, Jiang, Yu, Wang, Chong, Wei, Fenglin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Artificial neural networks; Autonomous underwater vehicles; Chips (memory devices); Data transmission; Energy consumption; Mechanical engineering; Neural networks; Object recognition; Real time; Signal processing; Static random access memory; Time response; Underwater exploration
• ISSN: 0959-6518; 2041-3041
• DOI: 10.1177/0959651820958208

In the field of underwater image recognition, a chip with smaller footprint and lower energy consumption is required to be implanted into autonomous intelligent underwater vehicle to make real-time response to the surrounding objects. Therefore, a promising accelerator with high performance and low energy consumption is designed, which optimizes the features possessed by convolutional neural network. The sharing of weights between neurons reduces the memory requirement. With all convolutional neural network data stored within on-chip static random-access memory, the need for memory access is drastically decreased. Besides, several small processing elements are used to form neural functional unit, which considerably reduces the bandwidth requirement through inter-processing element data transmission. By sending control signals to autonomous underwater vehicle, this accelerator enables it to avoid dangerous areas such as rocks and algae in time. The result suggests the proposed accelerator successfully achieves a higher processing speed than that of CPU and GPU with a footprint of 6.09 mm2 only and the energy consumption of 327.3 mW at 1 GHz.