The Event-Driven Software Library for YARP—With Algorithms and iCub Applications

Abstract

Event-driven (ED) cameras are an emerging technology that sample the visual signal based on changes in the signal magnitude, rather than at a fixed-rate over time. The change in paradigm results in a camera with a lower latency, that uses less power, has reduced bandwidth, and higher dynamic range. Such cameras offer many potential advantages for on-line, autonomous, robots; however, the sensor data do not directly integrate with current “image-based” frameworks and software libraries. The iCub robot uses Yet Another Robot Platform (YARP) as middleware to provide modular processing and connectivity to sensors and actuators. This paper introduces a library that incorporates an event-based framework into the YARP architecture, allowing event cameras to be used with the iCub (and other YARP-based) robots. We describe the philosophy and methods for structuring events to facilitate processing, while maintaining low-latency and real-time operation. We also describe several processing modules made available open-source, and three example demonstrations that can be run on the neuromorphic iCub.