ON-BOARD OPTICAL JOINT TRANSFORM CORRELATOR FOR REAL-TIME ROAD SIGN RECOGNITION

We design, implement, and test an on-board optical joint transform cor relator, using a nonlinear optically addressed ferroelectric liquid-cr ystal spatial light modulator in the Fourier plane. This compact corre lator performs real-time and on-board recognition tasks, such as road sign recognition. The influence of the nonlinearity in the Fourier pla ne is investigated, and scale-invariant filters are tested and impleme nted. Preliminary results from real-time dynamic scenario experiments are presented. Electronic and optical pre- and postprocessing as well as the extension to silicon backplane devices are discussed.