Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!boingo.med.jhu.edu!jhunix!ins_atge
From: ins_atge@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Thomas G Edwards)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: Artificial Retinas
Summary: New Retinal Ideas
Message-ID: <8378@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Date: 15 May 91 17:15:06 GMT
References: <1561@ucl-cs.uucp>
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University - HCF
Lines: 24

In article <1561@ucl-cs.uucp> S.Goonatilake@cs.ucl.ac.uk (suran) writes:

>Does anybody know of any practical applications using Carver
>Mead's artificial retinas ? 

The Mahowald Retina from Mead's group at CIT makes an exceedingly
useful "front-end" for other visual chips (such as motion detectors, etc.)
It allows a chip to be active over a large interval of brightnesses at one
time.

>Are there any new papers published
>about the project - I only have one paper from the Neurocomputing
>book (eds Anderson & Rosenfeld).

I am not sure, but I do know that other groups are working on
reducing the complexity of the circuitry.  One group at Hopkins
is creating a retina based on 2-transistor current-conveyors instead of
the 5-transistor transconductance amplifier.

By reducing the size and complexity of the retinal circuit, more
visual processing "back-end" circuitry can be put on the chip
for a given pixel density.

-Thoams Edwards