FPGA-Accelerated Neuromorphic Vision System for Real-Time Orbital Object Detection
Diego Hernández, Sebastián Valdivia, Vicente Westerhout, Esteban Vera, Daniel Yunge
Abstract
The escalating congestion in orbital space demands advanced monitoring solutions. This work presents a comprehensive open-source framework for neuromorphic resident space object (RSO) detection, adapting the foundational grid clustering algorithm for FPGA acceleration. The system integrates a single event-based camera (EBC) with a custom, distributed processing architecture, where rapid spatial quantization is executed in programmable logic (FPGA) and cluster formation is managed by a software client. We validate this architecture through systematic sampling of night-sky observations from the EVAS dataset, demonstrating 97% detection accuracy for RSOs. The implementation, which serves as a foundational toolkit for event-based FPGA processing, achieves efficient throughput with a total power consumption of 8.5 W and deterministic processing latencies below 62 ms. The architecture's energy efficiency and high-precision detection position it as a viable solution for distributed space surveillance networks.
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Classified with taxonomy v2 on Sat, 5 Sept 2026.