Archives for July 2021
Canon establishes professional photographer Photo service center inside the Tokyo 2020 Main Press Center
July 19, 2021 By Leave a Comment
Assorted Videos: ST, Leti, Omnivision, Innoviz, P2020, University of Wisconsin-Madison
July 18, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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ST presents one more use case for its ToF proximity sensors:CEA-Leti publishes a video about its perovskite-based X-Ray imagers:
Omnivision publishes its CTO Boyd Fowler's interview on automotive in-cabin monitoring: "Automotive in-cabin monitoring is on the rise – not just for drivers, but for passengers as well. Why? Hear from our FutureInSight chief technology officer, Boyd Fowler, in his one-on-one with AutoSens researcher Francis Nedvidek."
Innoviz CEO Omer Keilaf presents his company's LiDAR technology:
American Traffic Safety Services Association (ATSSA) publishes an IEEE P2020 presentation on LED flicker by Brian Deegan from Valeo, team leader of the IEEE P2020 Automotive Image Quality Working Group, LED Flicker Subgroup, and Robin Jenkin, Principal Image Quality Engineer at NVIDIA.
University of Wisconsin-Madison publishes an 1-hour long presentation by Mohit Gupta on single-photon imaging:
Smartsens News: Star Light Sensor Series, Mobile Market Debut, AI Family Improvements
July 17, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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Smartsens unveils SC850SL, a 4K-resolution image sensor in a new Star Light (SL) Series product lineup for high-end night vision cameras.The 8MP SC850SL features stack BSI and rolling shutter process and offers 15% sensitivity improvement over "its type on the market." Also, compared with similar products in the industry, the SC850SL leverages SmartSens’ ultra-low noise reading circuit design to reduce the RN and FPN by 69% and 59% respectively. Additionally, with SmartSens’ 2nd Gen NIR+ Technology, the QE of the SC850SL is boosted up by 55% at 850 nm and 80% at 940 nm in comparison with the previous generation NIR+ technology, respectively. Furthermore, the sensor supports both the Staggered HDR with up to 100 dB dynamic range and PixGain HDR without HDR combination artifacts. Additional features include enhanced SNR and higher image quality under high temperature conditions.
Currently, SC850SL is sampling and is expected to begin mass production in September 2021.
Smartsens also enters low-end smartphone image sensor sensor market with 2MP products. The SC201CS comes in a 1/5.1-inch optical format at a pixel size of 1.75 μm, in two versions—SC201CS-mono and SC201-color. The SC201CS FPN and the read noise are as low as 0.43e- rms and 1.5e- rms respectively. Also, the SC201CS delivers 35e-/s dark current and 87 ppm white pixel at 60°C and thus adapts well under high temperatures.
The company intends to expand its mobile phone image sensor lineup in future.
Smartsens announces upgrades its Advanced Imaging (AI) image sensor family: the SC230AI, SC430AI, and its third 3K-resolution CIS SC530AI in the AI Series to include performance upgrade technology SmartClarity-2. These three products target an assortment of 2MP to 5MP surveillance applications.
SmartClarity-2 leverages SFCPixel technology, PixGain technology, NIR+ technology and low noise reading circuit design to offer increased sensitivity and reduce the readout noise level by 21%. SmartSens NIR+ technology boosts QE of SC230AI to 36% at 850nm and 21% at 940nm.
SmartClarity-2 provides up to 50% higher FWC compared with the mainstream sensors of its type. Each sensor is developed in a package that is Pin2Pin compatible with the previous generation and makes it an easy upgrade for customers.
Sony’s View on Stacked CIS Evolution – English Version
July 16, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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M. kindly sent me an English translation of Sony paper on stacked sensor evolution. The pdf version of the translated paper is available here.
MagikEye Announces Invertible Light Technology Development Kit
July 16, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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BusinessWire: Structured light 3D sensing company Magik Eye announces its latest Invertible Light Technology (ILT) development kits. “With its high speed, low latency and superior surface visibility at near ranges, developers will now have a great new tool for object detection, guidance and gesture recognition. We are excited that developers can now explore optimal use cases for applications such as robotics that are truly effective for near-range applications and easy to use,” said Takeo Miyazawa, Founder & CEO of MagikEye.The ILT Development Kit (DK-ILT001) combines a simple IR laser projector with a standard CMOS image sensor to achieve 3D imaging at more than 600 fps, or up to 120 FPS with a simple Raspberry Pi host. With ILT’s proprietary algorithm, DK-ILT001 is able to accurately measure the position and shape of a target with ultra-low processing overhead.
DK-ILT001 will be released as an entry-level module for easy evaluation of fast, accurate and responsive 3D sensing technology as well as for enable new software applications development.
Sunny View on Smartphone Camera Trends
July 15, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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Sunny Optical publishes its Investor Day Presentation talking about smartphone camera trends:
Plasmonic Diffracting DTI Enhances Pixel Response at 940nm by 5.3x
July 15, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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OSA publishes Shizuoka University and University of Hyogo paper "Near-infrared sensitivity improvement by plasmonic diffraction for a silicon image sensor with deep trench isolation filled with highly reflective metal" by Atsushi Ono, Kazuma Hashimoto, and Nobukazu Teranishi."We propose a plasmonic diffraction structure combined with deep trench isolation (DTI) filled with highly reflective metal to enhance the near-infrared (NIR) sensitivity of image sensors. The plasmonic diffraction structure has a silver grating on the light-illuminated surface of a typical silicon backside-illuminated CMOS image sensor. The structural parameters of the silver grating were investigated through simulations, and the mechanism of the NIR sensitivity enhancement was clarified. Under the quasi-resonant conditions of surface plasmon polaritons, incident NIR light effectively diffracted as a propagating light to the sensor silicon layer. The diffracted light travelled back and forth between the DTIs. The effective propagation length in silicon was extended to six times by silver-filled DTI, resulting in approximately five times improvement of the 3-µm-thick silicon absorption at a wavelength of 940 nm."
Canon requests removal of toner cartridge offered by AZ Supplies from Amazon.com
July 15, 2021 By Leave a Comment
Canon announces conclusion of dispute with One Connection Limited and its managing director
July 15, 2021 By Leave a Comment
Quanergy Claims to Achieve Major Improvement in its OPA Scanning LiDAR Range
July 14, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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Quanergy SPAC merge presentation shows a dramatic improvement of its Optical Phase Array (OPA) LiDAR performance over the course of the last year. At the same time, the company admits that its previous designs had a very short range:
Samsung Unveils CornerPixel for Automotive HDR-LFM Applications
July 13, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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BusinessWire: Samsung introduces ISOCELL Auto S5K4AC, an automotive image sensor that offers 120dB HDR and LED flicker mitigation (LFM) especially for surround-view monitors (SVM) or rear-view cameras (RVC) in high-definition resolution (1280 x 960). The new sensor is said to be Samsung’s first imaging solution optimized for automotive applications.
“The new ISOCELL Auto 4AC combines Samsung’s innovative and market-proven image sensor technologies with a unique CornerPixel solution for advanced HDR and LFM capabilities, offering exceptional viewing experiences regardless of lighting conditions,” said Duckhyun Chang, EVP of sensor business at Samsung. “Starting with the ISOCELL Auto 4AC, we plan to expand our automotive sensor lineup to areas such as camera monitor systems (CMS), autonomous driving and in-cabin monitoring.”
The CornerPixel technology features a specialized pixel structure that mitigates LED flicker at over 90Hz. Within a single pixel area, it embeds two photodiodes, one 3.0µm pixel for viewing low light images, and a 1.0µm pixel placed at the corner of the big pixel for brighter environments. With two photodiodes capturing images in different exposures simultaneously, the sensor offers up to 120dB HDR with minimal motion blur.
To minimize LED flickering, the smaller photodiode’s exposure time can be extended, preventing pulsing LED light from being displayed as flickering on the camera screen.
The Samsung ISOCELL Auto 4AC comes in a 1/3.7-inch optical format with 1.2MP resolution and an ISP embedded within the sensor. The 4AC meets AEC-Q100 Grade 2 qualifications, including a -40°C to 125°C operating temperature range, and is currently in mass production.
Sony’s View on Stacked CIS Evolution
July 12, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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IEICE ESS Fundamentals Review publishes Sony paper "Evolving Image Sensor Architecture through Stacking Devices" by Yusuke OIKE. Unfortunately, there is no English version available and the pdf is protected from copying the text for an on-line translation.
"The evolution of CMOS image sensors and the prospects utilizing advanced imaging technologies promise to improve our quality of life. CMOS image sensors now dominate the market of digital cameras with the advent of parallel ADCs and back-illuminated technology. Moreover stacked CMOS image sensors continue to enhance functionality and user experience in mobile devices. We introduce the evolution of image sensor architecture for accelerating drastic performance improvements and for integrating edge computing connected to the sensor layer through stacking technologies. Furthermore, the fine pitch connection between the pixel and logic layers makes pixel parallel circuit architecture practical for the next stage of evolution."
Actlight Continues Work on its Single Photon Sensitivity Technology for "Leading Sensor Company"
July 12, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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PRNewswire: ActLight has signed the second service agreement based on its Single Photon Sensitivity technology with a leading company in the image sensor market.'This agreement is the natural continuation of the customer project started in 2020 and successfully completed earlier this year. We are very pleased to continue the joint activities with a market player of this caliber and to add value to their technology roadmap,' said Serguei Okhonin, Co-founder and CEO at ActLight. 'The adoption of Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) array in 3D sensing applications is today a growing reality and the markets are demanding performance improvements (e.g. pixel scaling, higher QE at near IR and higher performance/costs ratio). ActLight technology is developed to address these specific needs and, thanks to its unique features such as tunable sensitivity, low voltage and digital read-out, is perfectly suited to become the sensing solution of reference for 3D systems used in smartphones, cars and other mainstream products.`
EPFL publishes a PhD thesis by Denis Sallin "A low-voltage CMOS-compatible time-domain photodetector, device & front end electronics" explaining Actlight's device operation:
Huawei AV Unit President: Cars will Never Be Fully Autonomous
July 11, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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Reuters: "Our team's goal is to reach true driverless passenger cars in 2025," Wang Jun, senior executive at Huawei's smart vehicle unit, told at 2021 World Artificial Intelligence Conference.WorldStockMarket: "The L5 level of autonomous driving will never be reached. Mainly because the definition of the L5 level of autonomous driving covers all scenarios anytime, anywhere and in any weather, no human driver can handle it, so neither can a car be able to handle it," said Su Qing, President and Chief Architect of Huawei's ADS Intelligent Driving Solutions at the same conference ended last week in Shanghai.
Currently, Huawei's ADS autopilot system is equipped with a total of 34 sensors: 3 LiDARs, 13 cameras, 6 mm-wave radars, and 12 ultrasonic sensors.
AT&S Makes Miniature Package for AMS
July 10, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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AT&S shows its miniature package for AMS Naneye:"The image sensor not only creates sharp images due to its 100,000-pixel resolution, but it also has low power consumption thanks to our smart connection architecture,” says Markus Maier, Global Account Manager at AT&S. AT&S developed the PCB for the sensor, while the sensor itself was built by ams OSRAM.
The interconnect design was implemented using ECP (Embedded Component Packaging) technology. ECP enables both active and passive components to be integrated into laminate-based substrates, i.e. in a minimum of space. “Instead of placing the components on the PCB, they are integrated into the PCB. They ‘disappear’ inside the PCB,” Maier says.
Bankrupt CIS Fab is Up for Sale
July 9, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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Yangtze Evening News, OFweek, EET-China: As has been reported earlier, Huaian Imaging Device Manufacturer (HIDM) went bankrupt scrapping a total investment of 45 billion yuan and ambitious plans to produce 240,000 12-inch CIS wafers per year.Now, the entire assets of HIDM will be auctioned. The starting price is 1.66 billion yuan. According to the auction list, the overall assets of HIDM in this auction include 19 buildings such as production and office buildings, as well as 171,265.90 sq.m of industrial land, as well as machinery and equipment, electronic equipment, vehicles, raw materials, and other items.
Pixart Explains Optical Tracking Sensors Operation
July 9, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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Pixart publishes a video explaining laser and LED-based optical tracking sensors principles:Sony AI Sensors in Rome
July 8, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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Sony publishes a video about its IMX500 AI sensor use cases on streets of Rome, Italy:EMVA 1288 Release 4.0 is Official Now
July 8, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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EMVA officially unveils the new release 4.0 of the EMVA 1288 Standard for objective characterization of industrial cameras. The release takes into account the rapid development of camera and image sensor technology.
Until the previous Release 3.1 dated back December 2016, the application of the EMVA 1288 standard with a simple linear model was limited to cameras with a linear response and without any pre-processing. While this model is being continued with some improvements in the ’Release 4.0 Linear’, a new module ‘Release 4.0 General’ has been added in the latest release. With it, the characterization of a non-linear camera or a camera with unknown pre-processing is possible even without any model due to the universal system-theoretical approach of the EMVA 1288 standard. Just as with the linear camera model, all application-related quality parameters can be measured in this way. With both modules “Linear” and “General” the same measurements are performed. Depending on the camera characteristics, the proper evaluation either according to the linear or general model is applied.
In addition, Release 4.0 includes numerous expansions to characterize the latest generation of image sensors and cameras according to the application. The most important of these are:
- Extended wavelength range from UV to SWIR range.
- Raw data of any given image acquisition modality can now be characterized according to the standard.
- The versatile and universal analysis tools of the EMVA 1288 standard can also be applied to quantities calculated and derived from multiple channels. For polarization image sensors, these are, for example, the degree of polarization and the polarization angle.
- Inhomogeneities are measured in detail and now decomposed into column, row, and pixel variations. They can now be determined with a new method at all intensity levels from just two captured images.
- Optionally, cameras with optics or with illumination as given by the position of the exit pupil of the optics for which the image sensor was designed can be measured according to the standard. Thus, the standard is now also suitable for image sensors with pixels shifted towards the edge.
- A more suitable measure for the linearity of the characteristic curve is introduced.
Canon requests removal of toner cartridge offered by VaserInk from Amazon.ca
July 8, 2021 By Leave a Comment
Canon requests removal of toner cartridge offered by LXXL from Amazon.com
July 8, 2021 By Leave a Comment
Canon requests removal of toner cartridge offered by GREENCYCLE TECH, INC from Amazon.com
July 8, 2021 By Leave a Comment
Xiaomi, Sinovation Ventures, and Inno-Chip Invest in Prophesee
July 7, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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Prophesee announces a strategic partnership and investment by Sinovation Ventures, Xiaomi, and Inno-Chip, an investment firm which has obtained investment and support from Will Semiconductor, owner of OmniVision. The amount of the new investment has not been disclosed.“This round of funding takes us another step closer to establishing Prophesee as a clear leader in applying neuromorphic methods to machine vision and AI. The commitment from these new partners is a strategic part of our evolution and growth plan that will give us expanded global access to customers, particularly in China, for our revolutionary event-based vision sensing and processing approach,” noted Luca Verre, CEO and founder of Prophesee. “As we continue to develop strategies to align with targeted market segments like mobile, automotive, AR and industrial automation, involvement from established leaders such as Sinovation, Xiaomi and Inno-Chip will complement our current expertise and business networks, and position us strongly in the relevant ecosystems.”
Apple iPhone Cameras Evolution
July 7, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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SystemPlus publishes a review of Apple iPhone cameras from iPhone 6 to iPhone 12 Max:
LargeSense Presents its 140mm x 120mm CMOS Sensor
July 6, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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LargeSense Founder Bill Charbonnet presents the 4x5 format camera featuring 140mm by 120mm CMOS sensor with 6.7MP resolution:22 Theorems and 43 Lemmas about Pixel Conversion Gain
July 5, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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Arxiv.org paper "A novel approach to photon transfer conversion gain estimation" by Aaron Hendrickson, apparently from Johns Hopkins University, spans across 122 pages and has a lot mathematical statements, including 22 theorems, 43 lemmas, and 17 corollaries. All this is said to be necessary to calculate a conversion gain of CCD sensor with non-uniform pixels."Nonuniformities in the imaging characteristics of modern image sensors are a primary factor in the push to develop a pixel-level generalization of the photon transfer characterization method. In this paper, we seek to develop a body of theoretical results leading toward a comprehensive approach for tackling the biggest obstacle in the way of this goal: a means of pixel-level conversion gain estimation. This is accomplished by developing an estimator for the reciprocal-difference of normal variances and then using this to construct a novel estimator of the conversion gain. The first two moments of this estimator are derived and used to construct exact and approximate confidence intervals for its absolute relative bias and absolute coefficient of variation, respectively. A means of approximating and computing optimal sample sizes are also discussed and used to demonstrate the process of pixel-level conversion gain estimation for a real image sensor."
CAPD iToF Sensors Overview
July 5, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Melexis publish a MDPI paper "An Overview of CMOS Photodetectors Utilizing Current-Assistance for Swift and Efficient Photo-Carrier Detection" by Gobinath Jegannathan, Volodymyr Seliuchenko, Thomas Van den Dries, Thomas Lapauw, Sven Boulanger, Hans Ingelberts, and Maarten Kuijk. This is a type of iToF sensor offered by Sony, TI, and Melexis."This review paper presents an assortment of research on a family of photodetectors which use the same base mechanism, current assistance, for the operation. Current assistance is used to create a drift field in the semiconductor, more specifically silicon, in order to improve the bandwidth and the quantum efficiency. Based on the detector and application, the drift field can be static or modulated. Applications include 3D imaging (both direct and indirect time-of-flight), optical receivers and fluorescence lifetime imaging. This work discusses the current-assistance principle, the various photodetectors using this principle and a comparison is made with other state-of-the-art photodetectors used for the same application."
Olympus 8-25mm f4 Pro review
July 5, 2021 By Leave a Comment
The Olympus 8-25mm f4 Pro is a wide to standard zoom for the Micro Four Thirds system. Mounted on a Micro Four Thirds body it delivers a 16-50mm equivalent range, taking you from ultra-wide to standard coverage, making it a very flexible walkaround option whether you’re shooting stills or filming video. Find out why it’s become my favourite general-purpose zoom for M43 in my review!…
Albert Theuwissen’s Course Avaliable On-Line, 1st Lecture Free
July 5, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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Albert Theuwissen makes his image sensor course available on-line. Eight videos are available for a video-on-demand training. The first one is free of charge and is a kind of introduction to the remaining 7 videos (all around 30 min each).
The course comes together with live session during which participants can discuss the topics presented in the videos as well as discuss the outcome of the exercises and quizzes that are added at the end of every video. The timing of the live sessions will be adjusted to the geographical location of the participants.
This unique concept of video-on-demand + live interaction is now available here.
Image Sensor-based PUF
July 4, 2021 By Leave a Comment
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IEICE Electronics Express publishes a Ritsumeikan University, Japan, paper "Modeling attacks against device authentication using CMOS image sensor PUF" by Hiroshi Yamada, Shunsuke Okura, Masayoshi Shirahata, Takeshi Fujino.
"A CMOS image sensor physical unclonable functions (CIS PUF) which generates unique response extracted from manufacturing process variation is utilized for device authentication. In this paper, we report modeling attacks to the CIS PUF, in which column fixed pattern noise is exploited in a sorting attack. When the PUF response is generated with pairwise comparison method, unknown responses are predicted with probability over 87.8% with only 0.31% training sample of whole challenge and response pairs."
