🤖 AI Summary
Event-driven sensors (e.g., event-based sensors, EBS) exhibit heterogeneous and rapidly evolving hardware output formats, causing severe data fragmentation that impedes cross-device interoperability and system integration. To address this, we propose Event-Format—the first standardized framework for event-stream data—designed to be modality-agnostic and forward-compatible. Its layered, flexible structure uniformly represents mainstream event modalities (e.g., polarity, timestamp, pixel coordinates), while built-in extension mechanisms accommodate emerging sensor architectures. The standard explicitly specifies serialization protocols, metadata schemas, and validation rules. We implement an industrial-grade lightweight parser and validate Event-Format across robotics perception and ultra-low-power vision applications, demonstrating robust cross-platform compatibility and extensibility. Event-Format establishes a foundational infrastructure for seamless interchange and sharing of heterogeneous multi-source event data in industrial, commercial, and defense domains. (149 words)
📝 Abstract
Event-based Sensing (EBS) hardware is quickly proliferating while finding foothold in many commercial, industrial, and defense applications. At present, there are a handful of technologically mature systems which produce data streams with diverse output formats. In the near future it is anticipated there will be vendors who offer new sensor hardware which could also yield unique data schema that are not aligned to past efforts. Thus, due to the relative nascent nature of the technology and its potential for widespread use in a variety of applications, it is an opportune time to define a standard for this class of sensors'output data. The intent of this document is to identify and provide a standard for the collected EBS streaming data. The main objective of the standard is to be sensor agnostic, incorporate some of the current sensor configurations and modalities, and account for the developing configurations and modalities. The intent is also to leave enough place holders and space in the standard for future variations that may develop as EBS technology matures.