Simulation of evolvable hardware to solve low level image processing tasks

Abstract

The long term goal of the work described in this paper is the development of a bio-inspired system, employing evolvable hardware, that adapts according to the needs of the environment in which it is de- ployed. The application described here is the design of a novel and highly parallel image processing tool to detect edges within a wide range of con- ventional grey-scale images. We discuss the simulation of such a system based on a genetic programming paradigm, using a simple binary logic tree to implement the genetic string coding. The results acquired from the simulation are compared with those obtained from the application of a conventional Sobel edge detector, and although rudimentary, show the great potential of such bio-inspired systems.