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To date, though, the computing power required for algorithms that complex has represented a hurdle difficult to overcome, hindering the adoption of embedded platforms for these tasks. Recently, new system-on-chips (SoC's) integrating Neural Network hardware accelerators have appeared on the market, however. Thanks to such an improvement in terms of computational power, these devices allow the implementation of novel solutions satisfying all the above-mentioned requirements.
This Technical Note illustrates one of these implementations regarding the real-time social distancing estimation issue. This work started off the publicly-available open-source Social-Distancing project released by the [https://iit.it/|Istituto Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT)], which is illustrated in this [https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.02018v2|paper]. The goal was to port the IIT code onto a DAVE Embedded Systems Single Board Computer (SBC) powered by the [https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/arm-processors/i-mx-applications-processors/i-mx-8-processors/i-mx-8m-plus-arm-cortex-a53-machine-learning-vision-multimedia-and-industrial-iot:IMX8MPLUS|NXP i.MX8M Plus SoC]. This industrial/automotive-grade SoC is built around a 4-core ARM Cortex A53 CPU and has a rich set of peripherals and systems. It also integrates a 2.3 TOPS Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and native interfaces to connect image sensors making it suited for this kind of applications.
==The hardware/software platform==
=== Main application ===
As stated previously, the main application derives from the IIT Social-Distancing project. It was developed in several steps starting when only a few alpha samples of the i.MX8M Plus were availablethanks to the fact that DAVE Embedded Systems joined the the component's beta program.
==== Step #1 ====
[[File:Ss-main-pipeline-20210127.png|center|thumb|600x600px|Processing pipeline]]
The yellow box indicate processing performed by the ARM cores while the green one refers to the computation carried out by the NPU.
The following screenshots show the application running on the EVK.
