Experience report: embedded, parallel computer-vision with a functional DSL
Authors: 
Ryan R. Newton, Teresa KoAuthors Info & Claims
Abstract
This paper presents our experience using a domain-specific functional language, WaveScript, to build embedded sensing applications used in scientific research. We focus on a recent computervision application for detecting birds in their natural environment. The application was ported from a prototype in C++. In reimplementing the application, we gained a much cleaner factoring of its functionality (through higher-order functions and better interfaces to libraries) and a near-linear parallel speed-up with no additional effort. These benefits are offset by one substantial downside: the lack of familiarity with the language of the original vision researchers, who understandably tried to use the language in the familiar way they use C++ and thus ran into various problems.
Supplementary Material
References
[1]
Wavescript users manual, http://regiment.us/wsman/.
[2]
Michael Allen, Lewis Girod, Ryan Newton, Samuel Madden, Daniel T. Blumstein, and Deborah Estrin. Voxnet: An interactive, rapidlydeployable acoustic monitoring platform. In IPSN '08: Information processing in sensor networks, 2008.
[3]
Lennart Augustsson, Howard Mansell, and Ganesh Sittampalam. Paradise: a two-stage dsl embedded in haskell. ICFP Experience Report, pages 225--228, 2008.
[4]
Jakob Eriksson, Lewis Girod, Bret Hull, Ryan Newton, Samuel Madden, and Hari Balakrishnan. The pothole patrol: using a mobile sensor network for road surface monitoring. In MobiSys '08: Proceeding of the 6th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services, pages 29--39, New York, NY, USA, 2008. ACM.
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Geoffrey Mainland, Greg Morrisett, and Matt Welsh. Flask: staged functional programming for sensor networks. SIGPLAN Not., 43(9):335--346, 2008.
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Ryan Newton, Sivan Toledo, Lewis Girod, Hari Balakrishnan, and Samuel Madden. Wishbone: Profile-based partitioning for sensornet applications. In NSDI'09: Networked Systems Design and Implementation, 2009.
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R. Nikhil. Bluespec system verilog: efficient, correct rtl from high level specifications. Formal Methods and Models for Co-Design, 2004. MEMOCODE '04., pages 69--70, June 2004.
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W. Taha and T. Sheard. Multi-stage programming with explicit annotations. In Partial Evaluation and Semantics-Based Program Manipulation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 1997, pages 203--217. New York: ACM, 1997.
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- Experience report: embedded, parallel computer-vision with a functional DSL
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August 2009364 pages
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Association for Computing Machinery
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Publication History
Published: 31 August 2009
Published in SIGPLAN Volume 44, Issue 9
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