FALCON: FPGA-Accelerated Latency-Certifiable Occupancy Networks for Camera-Based Autonomous Driving
FALCON is a camera-based 3D occupancy front-end built on an AMD Kria KR260 embedded FPGA to guarantee frame deadlines for safety-critical applications like pedestrian braking. It achieves this by layering latency guarantees: analytically bounded programmable logic, measured inference envelopes over 100k frames, and a watchdog enforcing output delivery. The system demonstrates strong accuracy (mIoU 29.88) while achieving deterministic timing under worst-case conditions.