In this paper, we present a design methodology and resulting circuits that compensate for process variations without the need for post-fabrication efforts. We demonstrate how, using this methodology, current sources have been designed with more than a factor of two reduction in normalized standard deviation over equivalent uncompensated current sources. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first measured results showing effective circuit design techniques that reduce the impact of process variations by such magnitude. Such circuits can be an effective way to improve circuit yield as process variations increase.

In this paper we present the circuits and simulation results for a silicon neuron which is based on a modified version of the Mihalas-Niebur neural model. This silicon neuron produces 15 of the 20 known neural spiking and bursting behaviors. It has low complexity and reliable matching and can thus be easily integrated into more complex neuromorphic systems. Implemented in a 0.15 mum 1.5 V CMOS process, each neuron consumes about 7.5 nW of power at 1 kHz and occupies an area of 70 mum by 70 mum.

Imagery collected from outdoor visual environments is often degraded due to the presence of dense smoke or haze. A key challenge for research in scene understanding in these degraded visual environments (DVE) is the lack of representative benchmark datasets. These datasets are required to evaluate state-of-the-art object recognition and other computer vision algorithms in degraded settings. In this paper, we address some of these limitations by introducing the first realistic haze image benchmark, from both aerial and ground view, with paired haze-free images, and in-situ haze density measurements. This dataset was produced in a controlled environment with professional smoke generating machines that covered the entire scene, and consists of images captured from the perspective of both an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV). We also evaluate a set of representative state-of-the-art dehazing approaches as well as object detectors on the dataset. The full dataset presented in this paper, including the ground truth object classification bounding boxes and haze density measurements, is provided for the community to evaluate their algorithms at: https://a2i2-archangel.vision. A subset of this dataset has been used for the “Object Detection in Haze” Track of CVPR UG2 2022 challenge at http://cvpr2022.ug2challenge. org/track1.html.

Head mounted displays (HMD) may prove useful for synthetic training and augmentation of military C5ISR decisionmaking. Motion sickness caused by such HMD use is detrimental, resulting in decreased task performance or total user dropout. The genesis of sickness symptoms is often measured using paper surveys, which are difficult to deploy in live scenarios. Here, we demonstrate a new way to track sickness severity using machine learning on data collected from heterogeneous, non-invasive sensors worn by users who navigated a virtual environment while remaining stationary in reality. We discovered that two models, one trained on heterogeneous sensor data and another trained only on electroencephalography (EEG) data, were able to classify sickness severity with over 95% accuracy and were statistically comparable in performance. Greedy feature optimization was used to maximize accuracy while minimizing the feature subspace. We found that across models, the features with the most weight were previously reported in the literature as being related to motion sickness severity. Finally, we discuss how models constructed on heterogeneous vs homogeneous sensor data may be useful in different real-world scenarios.

Collaborative decision-making remains a significant research challenge that is made even more complicated in real-time or tactical problem-contexts. Advances in technology have dramatically assisted the ability for computers and networks to improve the decision-making process (i.e. intelligence, design, and choice). In the intelligence phase of decision making, mixed reality (MxR) has shown a great deal of promise through implementations of simulation and training. However little research has focused on an implementation of MxR to support the entire scope of the decision cycle, let alone collaboratively and in a tactical context. This paper presents a description of the design and initial implementation for the Defense Integrated Collaborative Environment (DICE), an experimental framework for supporting theoretical and empirical research on MxR for tactical decision-making support.

When scanning across a scene, luminance can vary by up to 100,000-to-1 (high dynamic range, HDR), requiring multiple normalizing mechanisms spanning from the retina to the cortex to support visual acuity and recognition. Vision models based on standard dynamic range (SDR) luminance contrast ratios below 100-to-1 have limited ability to generalize to real-world scenes with HDR luminance. To characterize how orientation and luminance are linked in brain mechanisms for luminance normalization, we measured orientation discrimination of Gabor targets under HDR luminance dynamics. We report a novel phenomenon, that abrupt 10- to 100-fold darkening engages contextual facilitation, distorting the apparent orientation of a high-contrast central target. Surprisingly, facilitation was influenced by grouping by luminance similarity, as well as by the degree of luminance variability in the surround. These results challenge vision models based solely on activity normalization and raise new questions that will lead to models that perform better in real-world scenes.