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Newsight Imaging publish a webinar explaining its NSI1000 eTOF sensor operation:

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A Youtube video explains seemingly impossible effects described in EPFL and Canon Archive.org paper published a few weeks ago:

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SeekingAlpha publishes Sony earnings call transcript with some updates on image sensor business:

"Next is in IS&S, Image Sensing & Solutions. Fiscal '20 quarter one sales decreased 11% year-on-year to ¥206.2 billion, and operating income decreased ¥24.1 billion to ¥25.4 billion.

Fiscal '20 sales are expected to decrease 7% to ¥1 trillion, and operating income is expected to decrease ¥105.6 billion to ¥130 billion. Now I will explain the state of our sensor business. Fiscal '20 sales of image sensors for mobile products are expected to decrease compared to fiscal '19, primarily due to a decrease in end-user product sales by one of our major customers, the deceleration of the smartphone market and a shift to mid-range and moderately priced models in that market resulting from the impact of the spread of COVID-19 and significant reduction in component and finished goods inventory by Chinese customer. Profitability is expected to be impacted by a decrease in gross margins and an increase in depreciation and manufacturing-related costs associated with production equipment we purchased in the previous fiscal year when we expected growth as well as higher research and development costs.

We do not expect to grow sales of mobile sensing products compared to fiscal '19 because adoption by smartphone makers has been slow and sales of flagship models, which already use our products have decreased due to the shift in market conditions. Sales of image sensors to AV have also decreased due to the contraction of the sensor market for digital cameras, resulting from the impact of the spread of COVID-19. We expect the market to contract in 1 year as much as we had previously expected it would contract over the next approximately 3 years.

In order to respond quickly to the changes in the environment, especially for image sensors for mobile products, we will modify our strategy, mainly in the areas of investment, research and development and customer base. We have already significantly reduced investment in capacity to supply demand in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2022, because we can supply that demand by stockpiling strategic inventory through utilization of our excess production capacity this fiscal year.

The forecast for cumulative capital expenditures for the 3 fiscal years began April 1, 2018, which we explained in the past, has been reduced ¥50 billion from approximately ¥700 billion to approximately ¥650 billion. And we are carefully reviewing the timing of planned capital expenditures in fiscal '21 and beyond. We will review the projects and priorities for research and development spending as well to ensure that they fit with the recent trends in the smartphone market and changes in our major customers' needs. However, in order to maintain and increase our future technological competitive advantage, we will not drastically reduce the number of projects or the budget. We intend to more proactively expand and diversify our customer base, which we're cautious to do previously due to production capacity constraints.

Over the mid- to long term, we will work to expand the applications for image sensors and the market overall by introducing edge-sensing products that use senses equipped with AI processing functionality, and we will steadfastly work to grow this business. We plan to complete within approximately 1 year an enhancement of our business model to adapt to the recent changes in the environment, and we expect to return the business to the path of profit growth from the second half of fiscal '21.

....About sensors, changes in the market and how are the changes occurring. For one thing, all over the world, there is poor sense in the market, deterioration of the market, and that is impacting the sensor sales. And also, the higher-priced products, well, it's, you could say, shifting to the moderate -- more moderate-priced models overall. So for our image sensors, especially the high-end image sensors that we sell, the high-end models are decreasing in sales. So that's impacting our business.

But as far as a large trend is concerned, the phones -- smartphones going larger and using multiple lenses, that will continue. The performance of -- for the cameras required for smartphones, for video and the camera photos, the demand for the higher quality will continue. Therefore, we believe the demand should come back sometime in the future.

...regarding image sensor, the capacity and the capacity factor and the second quarter. So the capacity for this quarter, for fiscal 2020 at the end of first quarter, and that's -- that's 133,000 per month at the master price; and also at the end of second -- of the second quarter, 135,000 per month. So we will gradually increase the capacity. That's our plan.

And also, the number of wafers to be input. The first quarter the actual figure is -- the average of 3 months is 126,000 for mobile and also for digital camera, and there were some adjustments made for production. And also for the projection for second quarter for that, the simple average for 3 months is 112,000. So for mobile and digital camera, I think there's going to be more production adjustment.

And then, well, for Sensing segment, the sales is expected to come down, and what is the magnitude of the impact? Well, last year, actual was a little over of ¥230 billion and it's a strong ¥230 billion. So generally, it's like 1/3 of that is the reduction in sensors or sensing products. That's 1/3. So a big point about that is that as of last year, we thought that the growth can be expected. So we made the capital investment and also, we have increased our R&D expenditures. And that has been the impact."

In a separate news, a Twitter post presents CIS market share chart from an unidentified Korean source. It shows a Q2 2020 market share taken away by somebody from both Sony and Samsung:

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Sony reports a drop of image sensor sales in its last fiscal quarter started on April 1, 2020:

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Sony presents a number of use cases for its REA-C1000 Edge Analytics Appliance - a separate box for now. Possibly, Sony intends to integrate some of its functionality onto the AI-enabled image sensors in the future. The power consumption of the Edge Analytics Appliance box is 40W.

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BusinessWire: Renesas introduced an UHD surveillance camera reference design to address today’s high-accuracy object detection and recognition needs for video security and surveillance systems. Developed in collaboration with Novatek Microelectronics and designed by Systemtec Corporation Ltd, the reference design includes a camera image sensor board with PDAF, and a ISP board along with auto focus zoom lens software.

Built around Renesas’ RAA462113FYL CMOS sensor and Novatek’s dual core SoC ISP, the surveillance camera reference design uses several other Renesas ICs that address its signal chain electrical functions. The CIS board includes the RAA462113FYL, DC/DC buck converters, LDOs, motor driver and lens. The ISP board features the SoC and associated signal chain components.

“An ever-increasing demand for security and surveillance camera systems drives the need for better object detection and recognition capabilities with higher imaging accuracy,” said DK Singh, Director, Systems and Solutions Team at Renesas. “Our surveillance camera with 4K resolution and PDAF function can deliver much faster autofocus results compared with conventional contrast-detection autofocus. We are excited that our close collaboration with Novatek and Systemtec makes this surveillance system reference design more accessible for customers worldwide.”

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ASM Q2 2020 investor presentation reports weaker booking for CIS packaging and shows its camera module assembly solutions:

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According to IBK Securities report, Galaxycore becomes the world's #3 in CIS units market share (left chart below). However, Omnivision still keeps #3 spot in terms of revenue (right chart).


i-Micronews: GalaxyCore files for IPO on Shanghai’s Science and Technology Innovation Board (Star Stock Market) worth as much as CNY 6.96 billion (USD 991.62 million). According to Frost&Sullivan, in 2019, the company shipped 1.31 billion image sensors, occupying a 20.7% volume market share globally. In terms of revenue, it ranked eighth with CNY 3.19 billion.

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AIP Applied Physics Reviews publishes National University of Singapore paper "Black phosphorus photonics toward on-chip applications" by Li Huang and Kah-Wee Ang.

"Unceasing efforts have been devoted to photonics based on black phosphorus ever since it came under the spotlight of two-dimensional materials research six years ago. The direct bandgap of black phosphorus is tunable by layer number, vertical electric field, and chemical doping, covering a broad spectrum for efficient light manipulation. The optical anisotropy further enables the identification and control of light polarization. Along with high carrier mobility, nonlinear optical properties, and integration capability due to its layered lattice structure, black phosphorus manifests itself as a promising multipurpose material for chip-scale optoelectronics. In this manuscript, we review the research on black phosphorus photonics, with a focus on the most fundamental active functions in photonic circuits: photodetection, electro-optic modulation, light emission, and laser pulse generation, aiming at evaluating the feasibility of integrating these black phosphorus-based components as a compact system for on-chip applications."

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ID Quantique (IDQ) announces that its image sensor based Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) chip has been integrated in the Vietnamese ‘Vsmart Aris 5G’ smartphone.

“With its compact size and low power consumption, our latest Quantis QRNG chip can be embedded in a smartphone to ensure trusted authentication and encryption of sensitive information. It brings a new level of security to the mobile phone industry. This is truly the first mass market application of quantum technologies,” says Grégoire Ribordy, CEO and co-founder of ID Quantique.

“Implementing ID Quantique QRNG in the Aris 5G smartphone is part of getting VinSmart customers access to the most advanced technology in the world. This breakthrough in terms of quantum enhanced security technology offers benefits for services including banking, medical data and personal information. In the near future, Vinsmart will continue to research and perfect the next-generation of its 5G offering to accelerate the universalization of this technology in VietNam,” says Tran Minh Trung, Deputy CEO of VinSmart.


IDQ opens a dedicated web page "Quantum Random Number Generation (QRNG) for mobile phones."

"At its core, the QRNG chip contains a light-emitting diode (LED) and an image sensor. Due to quantum noise, the LED emits a random number of photons, which are captured and counted by the image sensor’s pixels, giving a series of raw random numbers that can be accessed directly by the user applications. These numbers are also fed to a deterministic random bit generator algorithm (DRBG) which distills further the entropy of quantum origin to produce random bits in compliancy to NIST 800-90A/B/C standard.

The Quantis QRNG Chip allows live status verification: if a failure is detected in the physical process, the random bit stream is immediately disabled, the user is notified, and an automatic recovery procedure is performed to produce QRNG data again."

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Phys.org, OSA Optica: University of Glasgow, TU Delft, and Politecnico di Milano publishe a paper "Spatial images from temporal data" by Alex Turpin, Gabriella Musarra, Valentin Kapitany, Francesco Tonolini, Ashley Lyons, Ilya Starshynov, Federica Villa, Enrico Conca, Francesco Fioranelli, Roderick Murray-Smith, and Daniele Faccio.

"Traditional paradigms for imaging rely on the use of a spatial structure, either in the detector (pixels arrays) or in the illumination (patterned light). Removal of the spatial structure in the detector or illumination, i.e., imaging with just a single-point sensor, would require solving a very strongly ill-posed inverse retrieval problem that to date has not been solved. Here, we demonstrate a data-driven approach in which full 3D information is obtained with just a single-point, single-photon avalanche diode that records the arrival time of photons reflected from a scene that is illuminated with short pulses of light. Imaging with single-point time-of-flight (temporal) data opens new routes in terms of speed, size, and functionality. As an example, we show how the training based on an optical time-of-flight camera enables a compact radio-frequency impulse radio detection and ranging transceiver to provide 3D images."

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Forbes contributor Stephen McBride publishes his view on Sony CIS business:

"The growth in sensor sales over the past three years has been nothing short of remarkable. This year Sony will generate more profits from imaging than any of its other business lines. Sensors are on track to generate $1.92 billion in profits… 10% more than Sony’s long-established gaming arm.

Sony absolutely dominates the image sensor industry, accounting for over 50% of global sales.

The battle among smartphone firms to make better cameras has been a boon for Sony. It controls over 70% of the smartphone sensor market. And it’s been the exclusive maker of image sensors for every iPhone since 2010.

And when it comes to quality, Sony is in a league of its own. Its image sensors are so far ahead, it charges 2X as much as its closest competitor.

Right now, Sony’s world-class imaging business is flying under the radar. But as the computer vision boom takes off, I expect the stock to attract a lot of hype. And with image sensors becoming a larger part of Sony’s business, it could easily soar 300%+ in the coming years."

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VentureBeat, Forbes: Density, a San Francisoco-based startup building AI-powered 3D cameras, closes a $51M investment round, following $23M in previous funding.

Density uses 3D depth cameras and an AI cloud-based software to enable social distancing and occupancy analytics. Pepsi, Delta, Verizon, Uber, Marriot, and ExxonMobil are among its clients that use its service to figure out which parts of their offices get the most use and which the least and to deliver people-counting metrics to hundreds and thousands of their employees.

The Density 3D camera consists of over 800 components sourced from 137 supply chains. The camera attaches above a doorway and tracks movement with two Class 1 infrared lasers. The data is transferred via Wi-Fi to Density’s cloud-hosted backend, where it’s processed and analyzed. A web dashboard, SMS messages, signage, and mobile apps provide insights like the real-time capacity of a room and historical crowd sizes, while an API allows third-party apps, services, and websites to make use of the data in many other ways.

Density’s infrared tracking method offers a major advantage over other approaches: privacy. Unlike a security camera, its sensors can’t determine the gender or ethnicity of the people it tracks, nor perform invasive facial recognition. “It’s far easier to do a camera,” says Density CEO Andrew Farah. “But we believe the data pendulum has swung too far in one direction. It’s good to see people ask about data being collected … We knew that the right market was corporate clients with office space because our sensor can do occupancy detection inside of a room where a camera can’t go.”

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SeekingAlpha: Tower Q2 2020 earnings call has few updates on the foundry's imaging business:

"Moving to our Sensor Business unit, we forecast single-digit year-over-year growth in spite of several segments being strongly adversely impacted by COVID-19. For example, dental x-ray sensors where we have major market share. The impact is mainly seen in the form of customer requests to push out orders, dental clinics were closed for a long period and are still not back to full speed hence customers are very inventory cautious. Industrial sensors namely manufacturing line inspections is also down as a function of reduced new manufacturing line build out. Due to our very strong CIS platform and compatibility, our fingerprint sensors namely the under OLED 101 sensor and the under LCD lens type modules, we were developed and qualified in very short times. We target our first volume production revenue in the fourth quarter wrapping throughout 2021.

Our time-of-flight program is moving along very well. We are prototyping the first sensor to our lead customer this quarter and plans for after production in the first half of next year. This would be our first product moving to mass production utilizing our stacked wafer BSI pixel level bonding platform.

And as stated, for us, one of the beauties of that market is that we were able to very, very quickly develop and qualify flows because of a very, very strong and diverse CIS core that we have throughout the company. So CMOS image sensor throughout the company, and take advantage of a market need. As far as the time-of- flight, there's a variety of applications are going out for time of flight. It's predominantly at 300 millimeter. And it's focused with backside illumination and stack wafers. And that is also more than one customer with blue chip customers that are signed up on long-term agreements. Of course, we have to perform, but that is a very, very substantial market for us.

But we have seen a very, very big reduction in the forecast of the image sensors for dental X-ray."

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Yole Developpement report "CMOS Camera Module Industry for Consumer & Automotive 2020" forecasts the revenue of the global camera module market to expand from $31.3B in 2019 to $57.0B in 2025, at 12.8% CAGR.

"Beyond the sensor itself, innovations in all the different subcomponents of the camera module are in high demand. The introduction of periscope lenses was a major event that allowed 5x or even 10x optical magnification within the existing thickness of mobile phones. Optical image stabilization (OIS) is another critical technology for photography especially for telephoto, hence players are also looking for innovations in this area, using new materials, MEMS or liquid lens to replace the Voice Coil Motor (VCM) approach.

Technical upgrades of camera modules include the “Active Alignment” process to align multiple cameras well. There will be several innovations in camera module integration, like pop-up cameras or side-up cameras, and under-screen cameras in future.

The industry leader LG Innotek continues to maintain its position due to the large orders from Apple. Closing in are Ofilm and Sunny Optical, who have climbed to the second and third positions by relying on the strong domestic market in China, replacing Semco and Foxconn/Sharp. In the years to come the US-China trade war could play a big role in reorganizing the ranking of Compact Camera Module (CCM) players."

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National Science Review paper "Networking retinomorphic sensor with memristive crossbar for brain-inspired visual perception" by Shuang Wang, Chen-Yu Wang, Pengfei Wang, Cong Wang, Zhu-An Li, Chen Pan, Yitong Dai, Anyuan Gao, Chuan Liu, Jian Liu, Huafeng Yang, Xiaowei Liu, Bin Cheng, Kunji Chen, Zhenlin Wang, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Shi-Jun Liang, and Feng Miao from Nanjing University, China, and National Institute for Materials Science, Japan, proposes a pixel array that can recognaze objects:

"Comparing to human vision, conventional machine vision composed of image sensor and processor suffers from high latency and large power consumption due to physically separated image sensing and processing. Neuromorphic vision system with brain-inspired visual perception provides a promising solution to solve the challenge. Here we propose and demonstrate a prototype neuromorphic vision system by networking retinomorphic sensor with a memristive crossbar. We fabricate the retinomorphic sensor by using WSe2/h-BN/Al2O3 van der Waals heterostructures with gate-tunable photoresponses, to closely mimic the human retinal capabilities in simultaneously sensing and processing images. We then network such sensor with a large-scale Pt/Ta/HfO2/Ta one-transistor-one-memristor (1T1R) memristive crossbar, which serves as the role similar to the visual cortex in human brain. The realized neuromorphic vision system allows for fast letter recognition and object tracking, indicating the capabilities of image sensing, processing and recognition in the full analog regime. Our work suggests that such neuromorphic vision system may open up unprecedented opportunities in future visual perception applications."

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Brookman has updated its ToF products page with a number of cameras based on BT008D sensor:




Brookman also congratulates Shizuoka University Prof. Shoji Kawahito, one of the founding members and a chairman of the company, with reception of the “Tamba Takayanagi Award/Achievement Award”. "This is the result of excellent achievements in the pioneering research on high performance and high functionality of image sensors, which the professor has been working on for a long time, and their practical application. Currently, CMOS image sensors continue to evolve from conventional 2D imaging to 3D sensing. We will continue to do our utmost to return the accumulated research results to society by continuing to challenge the possibilities of image sensing."

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Teledyne e2v introduces Hydra3D, an 832 x 600 pixel resolution ToF CMOS sensor. Hydra3D is based on a 10µm three-tap pixel.




Update: GlobeNewswire: Ha Lan Do Thu, Marketing Manager for 3D imaging at Teledyne e2v says, “We are very pleased to announce our newest Time-of-Flight sensor, the first multi-tap high resolution sensor in the market. Our partnership with Tower allows us to provide customers with the highest level of 3D performance, including uncompromised image quality in both 2D and 3D mode, in all operation conditions.”

Hydra3D comes with an evaluation kit (Hydra3D EK), enabling customers to evaluate the sensor in multiple application setups. The kit includes a compact 2/3-inch optical format calibrated module, which includes a light source for near infrared illumination and an optic. Two versions will be available targeted at performing the Time-of-Flight principle at short-range distances (up to 5 metres) or mid-range distances (up to 10 metres) and with a field-of-view of 60° x 45° or a field of view of 40° x 30°, while capturing real-time 3D information at a full resolution.

Rafael Romay, VP of Professional Imaging at Teledyne e2v, says: “The great technology innovation and partnership with Tower has been key in the development of this innovative new ToF image sensor, helping us to bring to market this best-in-class solution.”

Avi Strum, SVP and GM of Sensors and Display BU at Tower, added “We are very excited about the release of Hydra3D. Our strong partnership with Teledyne e2v goes back more than 15 years and many of their state-of-the-art products are manufactured by Tower. The Hydra3D ToF product is aligned well with Tower’s strategic investment in the ToF market. We look forward to many other Teledyne e2v products utilizing our world class CIS technology.”

Samples will be available in August 2020 and evaluation kits will be available in September 2020.

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Sony: NEC Facilities and Sony Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has agreed to jointly establish SSN Facilities as a new company that manages facilities at semiconductor production bases. SSN Facilities will undertake facility management, repair work, maintenance work, etc. of Sony Semiconductor Manufacturing from September 1, this year. “SSN” stands for Sustainable & Smart Next generation.

NEC Facilities has a wealth of experience and specialized human resources, knowledge, and know-how regarding factory facility management at manufacturing bases, mainly semiconductors and electronic components. With the establishment of SSN Facilities, as an outsourcer of facility management in the manufacturing industry, we aim to further expand our business, centering on the semiconductor manufacturing field, where demand continues to grow as digitalization continues.

Sony Semiconductor Manufacturing outsources facility management operations at seven production sites in Japan to SSN Facilities to ensure stable operation and maintenance of clean rooms and facilities, as well as to enhance and streamline operations, as well as its own business.

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Barcelona, Spain-based The Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) launches a spin-off company, Qurv Technologies. The new company develops wide-spectrum image sensor technologies and integrated solutions for computer vision applications, addressing the needs of an autonomous and intelligent new world.

Qurv’s graphene/quantum dot image sensors platform technology allow operation from the visible to the SWIR range and can be integrated with current CMOS low-cost, high-manufacturability processes. Qurv’s "plug and play" approach aims to bring advanced machine vision capabilities to markets that are not accessible by the current state of the art SWIR sensors.

Qurv incubated in the KTT Launchpad for more than 6 years and holds a portfolio of more than 10 patent families. The incubation has received support from the Government of Catalonia, the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of Spain, the European Research Council, the Barcelona City Council and the Castelldefels City Council, the European Regional Development Funds allocated to Generalitat de Catalunya for emerging technology clusters, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

Antonios Oikonomou, Qurv’s CEO, comments, "Nature itself hides a vast amount of information beyond what is visible. By harnessing and efficiently processing this information, a new era in health, security and decision-making will emerge. However, no mass-deployable solution exists to provide these capabilities at scale and to everyone. With the immense support of the KTT unit at ICFO, we are now ready to achieve precisely this- to bring a technology once available only in the lab to the world.”

Stijn Goossen, the company’s CTO adds, “Our unprecedented expertise of the graphene/quantum dot stack puts us in an optimal position to leverage the benefits of integration with silicon CMOS technology in terms of functionality, performance and addressable markets. World-renowned experts in graphene, Prof. Frank Koppens and quantum dots, Prof. Gerasimos Konstantatos, have been key in the early technology development. We are delighted to announce that they will take up the role of scientific advisors to the company while further maturing the technology.”

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Photron unveils FASTCAM NOVA R2 with "unique CMOS image sensor technologies:"

• 4MP resolution
• 2048 x 2048 pixels at 1,440fps
• 1920 x 1080 pixels at 2,560fps
• ISO 8,000 monochrome
• ISO 2,500 color
• Global Electronic Shutter: 1ms to 2.7μs independent of frame rate
• 12b ADC

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Nikkei, Reuters: Camera module maker O-Film is one of 11 Chinese companies added to the U.S. Commerce Department's Entity List over alleged human rights abuses involving China's Uighur Muslim minority. The Shenzhen-listed O-Film supplies its camera module to many companies, including Apple, Microsoft, HP, Dell, General Motors, Amazon, Samsung, Huawei, Oppo, ZTE, and Sony.

"Since the establishment of its business entity of CCM business unit in 2012, OFILM has been focusing on the development and manufacturing of image modules. In just four years, it has become the largest manufacturer of image modules in the world, and the gap with other module manufacturers has expanded year by year. According to the market research firm TSR, the market share of OFILM’s CCM shipments exceed 20% in 2018, ranking first of the industry."

O-Film publishes an official statement on the blacklisting:

"As a global leader in technological innovation and advanced high-technology manufacturing, OFILM has always abided by the laws and regulations of the nations where we operate. We treat our employees equally and protect their rights and interests. Every year, multiple times, including in 2020, OFILM has passed independent third-party Corporate Social Responsibility workplace audits organized by our customers, including surprise inspections. We have received the RBA certification of the Responsible Business Alliance.

Ofilm employees are never coerced to work for us.

With great respect, we call on the United States to re-examine its recent decision. We look forward to communicating fully with the relevant US government departments. We also look forward to a full airing of the facts and to a just outcome."

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Leddartech's Frantz Saintellemy, President and COO, features in a podcast:



China-based Xaos Sensor presents its MEMS-based LiDARs priced at $200:




IDTechEx publishes a nice video with review of different LiDAR approaches on the market:




Forbes contributor Sabbir Rangwala publishes his analysis of Velodyne merger with GRAF and going public:

• Velodyne's valuation post-deal close has grown from ~$1.8B (Velodyne was estimated at a valuation of $1.6B before the merger announcement) to ~$3B as of July 21, 2020
• The ASP per unit drops from $7K in 2019 to $600 in 2024 – which is ~ a 10X reduction, and therefore a 10X increase in volumes shipped
• The growth in market share and unit volumes is based on a transition from the 360° FOV LiDAR products (Surround LiDAR which Velodyne has traditionally dominated) to the Vela series of products in which there is significant competition, and Velodyne is just starting to develop
• Finally, profitability and cash flow – they currently lose about $50M/year, break even by 2023 as the Vela products kick in
• The above analysis indicates that a part of their growth will need to come from acquisitions

Bloomberg reports that Uber conciders a guilty plea by its former LiDAR engineer Anthony Levandowski is proof that he’s a liar, and supports its decision to make Levandowski alone shoulder a $180M legal award Google won against him.

He agreed to plead guilty to Google-Waymo LiDAR trade secret theft and was driven into bankruptcy when Google won a contract-breach arbitration case against him. Levandowski was counting on Uber’s promise when it first hired him to provide legal cover, known as indemnification, from his former employer.

Uber now says it has no obligation to reimburse Levandowski for the $180M.

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A preprint paper "Past, Present, and Future of Face Recognition: A Review" by Insaf Adjabi, Abdeldjalil Ouahabi, Amir Benzaoui, and Abdelmalik Taleb-Ahmed from University of Bouira, Algeria, University of Tours, France, and University of Valenciennes, France, presents the challenges for the facial recognition algorithms:

"Face recognition is one of the most active research fields of computer vision and pattern recognition, with many practical and commercial applications including identification, access control, forensics, and human-computer interactions. Significant methods, algorithms, approaches, and databases have been proposed over recent years to study constrained and unconstrained face recognition. 2D approaches reached some degree of maturity and reported very high rates of recognition. This performance is achieved in controlled environments where the acquisition parameters are controlled, such as lighting, angle of view, and distance between the camera-subject. However, if the ambient conditions (e.g., lighting) or the facial appearance (e.g., pose or facial expression) change, this performance will degrade dramatically. 3D approaches were proposed as an alternative solution to the problems mentioned above. The advantage of 3D data lies in its invariance to pose and lighting conditions, which has enhanced recognition systems efficiency. 3D data, however, is somewhat sensitive to changes in facial expressions. This review presents the history of face recognition technology, the current state-of-the-art methodologies, and future directions."

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SRI publishes an article about Jim Janesick's recent works on image sensors for space astronomy:

"Janesick, senior principal research scientist at SRI’s Advanced Imaging lab, has been with the institute for 20 years and before that was at NASA’s famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for 22.

Janesick is the designer of SRI’s CMOS spaceborne imagers onboard the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter launched in 2020, and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018, missions that orbit the sun to study solar physics. Janesick notes that “after many years of advanced development, SRI’s CMOS imagers were awarded a TRL6 rating,” referring to the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale of 1 to 9 that NASA uses. “Once the team was at TRL6 along with successful ground-based prototype demonstrations, NASA gave the green light to use SRI’s CMOS imager in an instrument called the Solar and Heliospheric Imager, or SoloHI. This automatically gave the same rating to the Wide-Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) instrument since both missions use the same CMOS imager.”

NASA and ESA selected SRI’s imager because they were designed and fabricated to withstand the sun’s harsh radiation environment over several years at close range. As such, the spacecrafts are capable of capturing the closest images of the sun.

As the Parker Probe and Solar Orbiter proceeds with its missions, Janesick continues his as well. These days, he is most excited about two upcoming SRI missions; the Europa Clipper spacecraft, scheduled for a 2024 launch and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-U also scheduled for 2024. GOES will fly a solar instrument called Compact Coronagraph (CCOR) and the Europa Clipper will fly a Jupiter-oriented instrument named Europa Imaging System (EIS). GOES will use the same CMOS imager as the SoloHi imager. The Europa spacecraft will have the first large-scale flight approved CMOS imager ever flown (2k x 4k pixels). “We do an extensive testing and selection process in finding several perfect flight candidates, and we’re at that stage now for Europa,” Janesick states."

Jim Janesick is known to the broad cycles of image sensor designers for writing a book on Photon Transfer Curve (PTC), one of the most important characterization tools today. He received Exceptional Lifetime Achievement Award from International Image Sensor Society in 2019.

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EETimes reporter Junko Yoshida publishes an interview with Yole Developpement analysts "Covid Economy: How Damaged Are We?" The CIS business still goes strong in spite of pandemy:

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Espros July 202 Newsletter talks about importance of ToF light emitter:

Due to high illumination power, significant heat generation by the illumination warms up not only the illuminator, but the whole camera. Thus, good thermal management is key. Heat dissipation is required to keep the illumination as cold as possible.

It is to note, that the illumination power decreases significantly with higher temperature. The radiance of the LED in Figure 1 drops by 20% from room temperature to 100°C (junction) which reduces the operating range of the TOF camera at hight temperature.

It is also to note, that the rise and fall time of LEDs is current dependent, shown in Figure 2. The lower the current, the longer the rise and fall time. A variation in rise or fall time generates a significant distance shift. In the example shown in Figure 2, the change of rise/fall time is approx. 18ns between
a current of 100 and 3000mA. Without extra calibration and compensation, a distance shift of 2.7m can be observed! This is really significant.

Rules of thumb:

• A good thermal management of the illumination is key.
• When operating the camera with different LED currents, a separate calibration with at least offset compensation is required.
• Constant illumination power during the whole measurement cycle is key.
• Make sure that the illumination covers the required field of view, but not more.
• The modulation waveform is not important because 4th order harmonics or other effects are calibrated and compensated during runtime.

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EPFL and Canon paper "Superluminal Motion-Assisted 4-Dimensional Light-in-Flight Imaging" by Kazuhiro Morimoto, Ming-Lo Wu, Andrei Ardelean, Edoardo Charbon presents XYZT capture of light propagation.

"Advances in high speed imaging techniques have opened new possibilities for capturing ultrafast phenomena such as light propagation in air or through media. Capturing light-in-flight in 3-dimensional xyt-space has been reported based on various types of imaging systems, whereas reconstruction of light-in-flight information in the fourth dimension z has been a challenge. We demonstrate the first 4-dimensional light-in-flight imaging based on the observation of a superluminal motion captured by a new time-gated megapixel single-photon avalanche diode camera. A high resolution light-in-flight video is generated with no laser scanning, camera translation, interpolation, nor dark noise subtraction. A machine learning technique is applied to analyze the measured spatio-temporal data set. A theoretical formula is introduced to perform least-square regression, and extra-dimensional information is recovered without prior knowledge. The algorithm relies on the mathematical formulation equivalent to the superluminal motion in astrophysics, which is scaled by a factor of a quadrillionth. The reconstructed light-in-flight trajectory shows a good agreement with the actual geometry of the light path. Our approach could potentially provide novel functionalities to high speed imaging applications such as non-line-of-sight imaging and time-resolved optical tomography."

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Ibeo publishes a webinar explaining the company's approach to the solid-state LiDAR:



In another webinar, Ibeo presents its view on AI challenges and solutions in autonomous driving.

BusinessWire, BusinessWire: Velodyne announces a long-term global licensing agreement with Hesai Photonics Technology encompassing 360° surround-view lidar sensors. As a result of this agreement, Velodyne and Hesai have agreed to dismiss current legal proceedings in the U.S., Germany and China that exist between the two companies.

“We think this agreement will expand the adoption of lidar world-wide and save lives,” says David Hall, Velodyne Founder and Chairman of the Board. The relationship with Hesai is the third major licensing agreement for Velodyne’s lidar technology.

BusinessWire: Cepton hires Andrew Klaus as country manager for Japan who used to work at the same position for Innoviz.

Earlier this year, Cepton concluded a successful Series C financing round led by Koito Manufacturing, the world’s largest automotive lighting Tier 1. Around the same time, Cepton expanded its business team in Europe with the appointment of two Directors of Product Management and Marketing.

BusinessWire: Luminar announces an expansion of its leadership as it drives into its next phase of growth in automotive. Over the next 18 months, the company is scaling its technology into series production, starting with Volvo in 2022, and will begin shipping its Iris sensing and perception platform within the year. Luminar hired 5 new executives from ZF, Mobileye, Magic Leap, and Goldman Sachs.

PRNewswire: SiLC, a developer of single-chip FMCW LiDAR, announces that Frost & Sullivan has selected the company for its 2020 North American 3D/4D LiDAR Imaging Industry Technology Innovation Award. This recognition comes on the heels of SiLC being selected by EETimes as one of the emerging silicon startups to watch worldwide. According to the Frost & Sullivan report, SiLC's proprietary 4D LIDAR chip is ideally positioned to disrupt the global LIDAR market due to its unique capabilities with broad applications, including autonomous vehicles, machine vision, and augmented reality.

"We're delighted by this recognition and greatly appreciate the depth and quality of Frost & Sullivan's analysis of SiLC's breakthrough Smart 4D Vision Sensor technology," said Mehdi Asghari, CEO of SiLC. "We also appreciate that Frost & Sullivan highlighted the breadth of our technology, which has the potential to replace ToF-based LiDAR sensors used in applications from automotive advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and self-driving autonomous vehicles to augmented reality, security, and industrial machine vision."

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