Assistive vision-based solutions for the driver extend the capabilities of human vision and support safe travel. Unfortunately, their widespread usage is generally limited to expensive cars. Interestingly, a high price is most likely a derivative of the costs incurred in the research instead of the value of hardware components. In the article we show that a mobile system for pedestrian detection in severe lighting conditions can be build using state of the art algorithms and widely available hardware. The proposed night-vision system for pedestrian detection processes thermal images using a proprietary ODROID XU4 microcomputer under Ubuntu MATE operating system. We applied a cascade object detector for the task of human silhouette detection in context of thermal imagery and contrasted the results with the state of the art deep learning approach. The experiments conducted prove effectiveness of the proposed solution.

The review is devoted to methods of structural decomposition that are used for optimizing characteristics of circuits of finite state machines (FSMs). These methods are connected with the increasing the number of logic levels in resulting FSM circuits. They can be viewed as an alternative to methods of functional decompositions. The roots of these methods are analysed. It is shown that the first methods of structural decomposition have appeared in 1950s together with microprogram control units. The basic methods of structural decomposition are analysed. They are such methods as the replacement of FSM inputs, encoding collections of FSM outputs, and encoding of terms. It is shown that these methods can be used for any element basis. Additionally, the joint application of different methods is shown. The analysis of change in these methods related to the evolution of the logic elements is performed. The application of these methods for optimizing FPGA- based FSMs is shown. Such new methods as twofold state assignment and mixed encoding of outputs are analysed. Some methods are illustrated with examples of FSM synthesis. Additionally, some experimental results are represented. These results prove that the methods of structural decomposition really improve the characteristics of FSM circuits.

Methods for reducing power consumption in circuits of finite state machines (FSMs) are discussed in this review. The review outlines the main approaches to solving this problem that have been developed over the last 40 years. The main sources of power dissipation in CMOS circuits are shown; the static and dynamic components of this phenomenon are analyzed. The power consumption saving can be achieved by using coarse-grained methods common to all digital systems. These methods are based on voltage or/and clock frequency scaling. The review shows the main structural diagrams generated by the use of these methods when optimizing the power characteristics of FSM circuits. Also, there are various known fine-grained methods taking into account the specifics of both FSMs and logic elements used. Three groups of the fine-grained methods targeting FPGA-based FSM circuits are analyzed. These groups include clock gating, state assignment, and replacing look-up table (LUT) elements by embedded memory blocks (EMBs). The clock gating involves a separate or joint use of such approaches as the (1) decomposition of FSM inputs and (2) disabling FSM inputs. The aim of the power-saving state assignment is to reduce the switching activity of a resulting FSM circuit. The replacement of LUTs by EMBs allows a reduction in the power consumption due to a decrease in the number of FSM circuit elements and their interconnections. We hope that the review will help experts to use known methods and develop new ones for reducing power consumption. We think that a good knowledge and understanding of existing methods of reducing power consumption is a prerequisite for the development of new, more effective methods to solve this very important problem. Although the methods considered are mainly aimed at FPGA-based FSMs, they can be modified, if necessary, and used for the power consumption optimization of FSM circuits implemented with other logic elements.

Practically, any digital system includes sequential blocks. This article is devoted to a case when sequential blocks are represented by models of Mealy finite state machines (FSMs). The performance (maximum operating frequency) is one of the most important characteristics of an FSM circuit. In this article, a method is proposed which aims at increasing the operating frequency of LUT-based Mealy FSMs with twofold state assignment. This is done using only extended state codes. Such an approach allows excluding a block of transformation of binary state codes into extended state codes. The proposed approach leads to LUT-based Mealy FSM circuits having two levels of logic blocks. Each function for any logic level is represented by a circuit including a single LUT. The proposed method is illustrated by an example of synthesis. The results of experiments conducted with standard benchmarks show that the proposed approach produces LUT-based circuits with significantly higher operating frequency than it is for circuits produced by other investigated methods (Auto and One-hot of Vivado, JEDI, twofold state assignment). The performance is increased by an average of 15.9 to 25.49 percent. These improvements are accompanied by a small growth of the numbers of LUTs compared with circuits based on twofold state assignment. Our approach provides the best area-time products compared with other investigated methods. The advantages of the proposed approach increase as the number of FSM inputs and states increases.