# Embedded Graph Convolutional Networks for Real-Time Event Data Processing on SoC FPGAs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.07318 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07318/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 43 of its 79 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.00596/) (2019)
- [Fast Graph Representation Learning with PyTorch Geometric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02428/) (2019)
- [Quantization and Training of Neural Networks for Efficient Integer-Arithmetic-Only Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.05877/) (2017)
- [Event-based Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08405/) (2019)
- [Weisfeiler and Leman Go Neural: Higher-order Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.02244/) (2018)
- [High Speed and High Dynamic Range Video with an Event Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.07165/) (2019)
- [Converting Static Image Datasets to Spiking Neuromorphic Datasets Using Saccades](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1507.07629/) (2015)
- [HATS: Histograms of Averaged Time Surfaces for Robust Event-based Object Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07913/) (2018)
- [End-to-End Learning of Representations for Asynchronous Event-Based Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08245/) (2019)
- [Training Deep Spiking Neural Networks using Backpropagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.08782/) (2016)
- [Learning to Detect Objects with a 1 Megapixel Event Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.13436/) (2020)
- [SplineCNN: Fast Geometric Deep Learning with Continuous B-Spline Kernels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08920/) (2017)
- [Recurrent Vision Transformers for Object Detection with Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05598/) (2022)
- [AEGNN: Asynchronous Event-based Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17149/) (2022)
- [Temporal-wise Attention Spiking Neural Networks for Event Streams Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.11711/) (2021)
- [Event-based Asynchronous Sparse Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09148/) (2020)
- [Graph-Based Object Classification for Neuromorphic Vision Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06648/) (2019)
- [GET: Group Event Transformer for Event-Based Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02642/) (2023)
- [EventNet: Asynchronous Recursive Event Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07045/) (2018)
- [Asynchronous Convolutional Networks for Object Detection in Neuromorphic Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.07931/) (2018)
- [Graph-based Asynchronous Event Processing for Rapid Object Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14419/) (2023)
- [HFirst: A Temporal Approach to Object Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1508.01176/) (2015)
- [Event-based Motion Segmentation with Spatio-Temporal Graph Cuts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.08730/) (2020)
- [Event Transformer. A sparse-aware solution for efficient event data processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03355/) (2022)
- [Event-Based Angular Velocity Regression with Spiking Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.02790/) (2020)
- [A Voxel Graph CNN for Object Classification with Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.00216/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Hardware-accelerated graph neural networks: an alternative approach for neuromorphic event-based audio classification and keyword spotting on SoC FPGA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16442/) (2026)
- [Increasing the scalability of graph convolution for FPGA-implemented event-based vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04269/) (2024)
- [Hardware-Accelerated Event-Graph Neural Networks for Low-Latency Time-Series Classification on SoC FPGA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06629/) (2025)
- [EHGCN: Hierarchical Euclidean-Hyperbolic Fusion via Motion-Aware GCN for Hybrid Event Stream Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16616/) (2025)
- [Analog Quantum Asynchronous Event-Based Graph Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.11000/) (2026)
- [Hardware-aware Graph Neural Networks prunning for embedded event-based vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.06739/) (2026)
- [ETHEREAL: A 25.6-μs/inf. Low-latency Event-driven Graph-neural-network Processor for High-resolution Vision at the Edge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.17787/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The utilisation of event cameras represents an important and swiftly evolving trend aimed at addressing the constraints of traditional video systems. Particularly within the automotive domain, these cameras find significant relevance for their integration into embedded real-time systems due to lower latency and power consumption. One effective approach to ensure the necessary throughput and latency for event processing is through the utilisation of graph convolutional networks (GCNs). In this study, we introduce a custom EFGCN (Event-based FPGA-accelerated Graph Convolutional Network) designed with a series of hardware-aware optimisations tailored for PointNetConv,a graph convolution designed for point cloud processing. The proposed techniques result in up to 100-fold reduction in model size compared to Asynchronous Event-based GNN (AEGNN), one of the most recent works in the field, with a relatively small decrease in accuracy (2.9% for the N-Caltech101 classification task, 2.2% for the N-Cars classification task), thus following the TinyML trend. We implemented EFGCN on a ZCU104 SoC FPGA platform without any off-chip external memory resources, achieving a throughput of 13.3 million events per second (MEPS) and real-time partially asynchronous processing with low latency. Across multiple event-based classification benchmarks, our approach achieves competitive accuracy while providing state-of-the-art computational efficiency per event, small model size, and high scalability, customisability and resource efficiency. We publish both software and hardware source code in an open repository: https://github.com/vision-agh/gcnn-dvs-fpga.