A comparison of correntropy-based feature tracking on FPGAs and GPUs

Embedded signal-processing applications often require feature tracking to identify and track the motion of different objects (features) across a sequence of images. Common measures of similarity for real-time usage are either based on correlation, mean-squared error, or sum of absolute differences, which are not robust enough for safety-critical applications. A recent feature-tracking algorithm called C-Flow uses correntropy to significantly improve signal-to-noise ratio. In this paper, we present an FPGA accelerator for C-Flow that is typically 2–7x faster than a GPU and show that the FPGA is the only device capable of real-time usage for large features. Furthermore, we show the FPGA accelerator is generally more appropriate for embedded usage, with energy consumption that is often 1.2–7.9x less than the GPU.