Gleanmer: A 6 mW SoC for Real-Time 3D Gaussian Occupancy Mapping

TL;DR

Gleanmer is a low-power, real-time 3D Gaussian occupancy mapping SoC that significantly reduces energy consumption and is suitable for edge applications like AR/VR and autonomous navigation.

Contribution

It introduces Gleanmer, a novel 6 mW SoC with an accelerator for efficient 3D occupancy mapping using Gaussians, optimized for low power and real-time performance.

Findings

Reduces construction and query energy by up to 63% and 81%.

Processes 640x480 images at over 88 fps during map construction.

First fabricated SoC to achieve real-time 3D mapping under 6 mW.

Abstract

High-fidelity 3D occupancy mapping is essential for many edge-based applications (such as AR/VR and autonomous navigation) but is limited by power constraints. We present Gleanmer, a system on chip (SoC) with an accelerator for GMMap, a 3D occupancy map using Gaussians. Through algorithm-hardware co-optimizations for direct computation and efficient reuse of these compact Gaussians, Gleanmer reduces construction and query energy by up to 63% and 81%, respectively. Approximate computation on Gaussians reduces accelerator area by 38%. Using 16nm CMOS, Gleanmer processes 640x480 images in real time beyond 88 fps during map construction and processes over 540K coordinates per second during map query. To our knowledge, Gleanmer is the first fabricated SoC to achieve real-time 3D occupancy mapping under 6 mW for edge-based applications.