Archives for September 2024

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Press release from Quantum Solutions:

September 19, 2024

QUANTUM SOLUTIONS and TOPODRONE Unveil TOPODRONE x Q.Fly: A Cost-Effective, DJI- Ready Quantum Dot SWIR Camera for UAV Applications

Quantum Solutions and Topodrone are excited to announce the launch of the Q.Fly, a next- generation camera with Quantum Dot Short Wave Infrared (SWIR) imaging capability designed specifically for UAV (drones) platforms. The Q.Fly is fully DJI-ready, working seamlessly out of the box with DJI Matrice 300 and DJI Matrice 350 RTK, offering real-time video streaming, control, and configuration directly from the DJI remote controller.

Developed to make SWIR technology more accessible and affordable for drone service companies and drone users, Q.Fly delivers a ready-to-use solution that eliminates the complexities of integrating advanced sensors into UAV platforms. The camera system also includes an RGB camera and/or a thermal camera for enhanced vision capabilities. With plug- and-play compatibility and unmatched spectral imaging performance, Q.Fly redefines what’s possible for a wide range of airborne applications.

This unique product combines the Quantum Solutions’ Quantum Dot SWIR Imaging technology with TOPODRONE’s UAV expertise, providing a cost-effective alternative to traditional SWIR cameras. Q.Fly covers a broad spectral range from VIS-SWIR (400–1700 nm), making it ideal for a variety of airborne applications that demand precise, high-resolution imaging.

·       Built-In RGB Cameras with optional Thermal imager: Includes a 16 MP RGB camera for visual positioning and a thermal imager (640 x 512 pixels, 30 Hz) for enhanced versatility

·       High-precision spectral images geo-referencing

·       High-Speed Spectral Imaging: Capable of operating at 220 Hz, delivering superior spectral imaging performance in real-time

·       Lightweight Design: Weighing only 650g with its 3-axis gyrostabilized gimbal, Q.Fly allows for flight times of up to 35 minutes per battery cycle

·       Built-In Linux Computer: Facilitates easy camera control and supports a variety of protocols, including DJI PSDK and Mavlink

·       Filter Flexibility: Supports quick installation of spectral filters to adapt to specific use cases

Q.Fly is designed to serve industries that require precise, reliable, and easy-to-use drone-based imaging solutions, including:

• Agriculture
•  Fire Safety and Rescue
•  Security&surveillance
•  Industrial Inspection and Surveying

Product Launch at INTERGEO 2024
The TOPODRONE x Q.Fly will be officially unveiled at the INTERGEO 2024 exhibition in Stuttgart from September 24–26. This breakthrough technology will be showcased, highlighting its cost-effectiveness and how it can transform UAV imaging for various industries.
Attendees are invited to visit TOPODRONE Booth: Booth Hall 1 - Booth: B1.055 to experience the Q.Fly and learn more about its unparalleled ease of use and advanced SWIR capabilities.
 
Unparalleled Ease of Use for Drone Operators
Q.Fly is designed with drone operators in mind, offering a hassle-free solution that simplifies the often-complex process of integrating advanced sensors into UAV platforms. With its plug- and-play compatibility with DJI drones, users can quickly deploy the Q.Fly for a wide range of applications without the need for complex setup procedures.

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Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

The 6th International Workshop on Image Sensors and Imaging Systems (IWISS2024) will be held at the Tokyo University of Science on Friday November 8, 2024.

In this workshop, people from various research fields, such as image sensing, imaging systems, optics, photonics, computer vision, and computational photography/imaging, come together to discuss the future and frontiers of image sensor technologies in order to explore the continuous progress and diversity in image sensors engineering and state-of-the-art and emerging imaging systems technologies.


Date: November 8 (Fri), 2024
Venue: Forum-2, Morito Memorial Hall, Building 13, Tokyo University of Science / Online
Access: https://maps.app.goo.gl/LyecM4XUYazco5D79
Address: 4-2-2, Kagurazaka, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-0825, JAPAN

Online registration fees information is available here.
Registration is necessary because the number of seats in person is limited. Online viewing via Zoom is also offered.
Registration deadline is Nov. 5 (Tue).
Register and pay online from the following website: [Online registration page]

[Plenary Talk]
"CMOS Direct Time-of-Flight Depth Sensor for Solid-Sate LiDAR Systems"
by Jaehyuk Choi (SolidVue, Inc., Korea & Sungkyunkwan Univ. (SKKU), Korea)

[8 Invited Talks]
Invited-1 “Plasmonic Color Filters for Multi-spectral Imaging” by Atsushi Ono (Shizuoka Univ., Japan)
Invited-2 (online) “Intelligent Imager with Processing-in-Sensor Techniques” by Chih-Cheng Hsieh (National Tsing Hua Univ. (NTHU), Taiwan)
Invited-3 “Designing a Camera for Privacy Preserving” by Hajime Nagahara (Osaka Univ., Japan)
Invited-4 “Deep Compressive Sensing with Coded Image Sensor” by Michitaka Yoshida (JSPS, Japan), et al.
Invited-5 “Event-based Computational Imaging using Modulated Illumination” by Tsuyoshi Takatani (Univ. of Tsukuba, Japan)
Invited-6 “Journey of Pixel Optics Scaling into Deep Sub-micron and Migration to Meta Optics Era” by In-Sung Joe (Samsung Electronics, Korea)
Invited-7 “Trigger-Output Event-Driven SOI pixel Sensor for X-ray Astronomy” by Takeshi Tsuru (Kyoto Univ., Japan)
Invited-8 “New Perspectives for Infrared Imaging Enabled by Colloidal Quantum Dots” by Pawel E. Malinowski (imec, Belgium), et al.

Sponsored by:
Technical Group on Information Sensing Technologies (IST), the Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers (ITE)
Co-sponsored by:
International Image Sensor Society (IISS)

Group of Information Photonics (IPG) +CMOS Working Group, the Optical Society of Japan
General Chair: Keiichiro Kagawa (Shizuoka Univ., Japan)
Technical Program Committee (Alphabetical order): Keiichiro Kagawa (Shizuoka Univ., Japan), Hiroyuki Suzuki (Gunma Univ., Japan), Hisayuki Taruki (Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation, Japan), Min-Woong Seo (Samsung Electronics, Korea), Sanshiro Shishido (Panasonic Holdings Corporation, Japan)

Contact for any question about IWISS2024
E-mail: iwiss2024@idl.rie.shizuoka.ac.jp (Keiichiro Kagawa, Shizuoka Univ., Japan)

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Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

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Thesis Title: Advanced techniques for SPAD-based CMOS d-ToF systems
Author: Alessandro Tontini
Affiliation: University of Trento and FBK

Full text available here: [link]

Abstract:

The possibility to enable spatial perception to electronic devices gave rise to a number of important development results in a wide range of fields, from consumer and entertainment applications to industrial environments, automotive and aerospace. Among the many techniques which can be used to measure the three-dimensional (3D) information of the observed scene, the unique features offered by direct time-of-flight (d-ToF) with single photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) integrated into a standard CMOS process result in a high interest for development from both researchers and market stakeholders. Despite the net advantages of SPAD-based CMOS d-ToF systems over other techniques, still many challenges have to be addressed. The first performance-limiting factor is represented by the presence of uncorrelated background light, which poses a physical limit to the maximum achievable measurement range. Another problem of concern, especially for scenarios where many similar systems are expected to operate together, is represented by the mutual system-to-system interference, especially for industrial and automotive scenarios where the need to guarantee safety of operations is a pillar. Each application, with its own set of requirements, leads to a different set of design challenges. However, given the statistical nature of photons, the common denominator for such systems is the necessity to operate on a statistical basis, i.e., to run a number of repeated acquisitions over which the time-of-flight (ToF) information is extracted. The gold standard to manage a possibly huge amount of data is to compress them into a histogram memory, which represents the statistical distribution of the arrival time of photons collected during the acquisition. Considering the increased interest for long-range systems capable of both high imaging and ranging resolutions, the amount of data to be handled reaches alarming levels. In this thesis, we propose an in-depth investigation of the aforesaid limitations. The problem of background light has been extensively studied over the years, and already a wide set of techniques which can mitigate the problem are proposed. However, the trend was to investigate or propose single solutions, with a lack of knowledge regarding how different implementations behave on different scenarios. For such reason, our effort in this view focused on the comparison of existing techniques against each other, highlighting each pros and cons and suggesting the possibility to combine them to increase the performance. Regarding the problem of mutual system interference, we propose the first per-pixel implementation of an active interference-rejection technique, with measurement results from a chip designed on purpose. To advance the state-of-the-art in the direction of reducing the amount of data generated by such systems, we provide for the first time a methodology to completely avoid the construction of a resource-consuming histogram of timestamps. Many of the results found in our investigations are based on preliminary investigations with Monte Carlo simulations, while the most important achievements in terms of interference rejection capability and data reduction are supported by measurements obtained with real sensors.

Contents

Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD)
1.1.1 Passive quenching
1.1.2 Active quenching
1.1.3 Photon Detection Efficiency (PDE)
1.1.4 Dark Count Rate (DCR) and afterpulsing

2 Related work
2.1 Pioneering results
2.2 Main challenges
2.3 Integration challenges

3 Numerical modelling of SPAD-based CMOS d-ToF sensors
3.1 Simulator architecture overview
3.2 System features modeling
3.2.1 Optical model
3.2.2 Illumination source - modeling of the laser emission profile
3.3 Monte Carlo simulation
3.3.1 Generation of SPAD-related events
3.3.2 Synchronous and asynchronous SPAD model
3.4 Experimental results
3.5 Summary

4 Analysis and comparative evaluation of background rejection techniques
4.1 Background rejection techniques
4.1.1 Photon coincidence technique
4.1.2 Auto-Sensitivity (AS) technique
4.1.3 Last-hit detection
4.2 Results
4.2.1 Auto-Sensitivity vs. photon coincidence
4.2.2 Comparison of photon coincidence circuits
4.2.3 Last-hit detection characterization
4.3 Automatic adaptation of pixel parameters
4.4 Summary


5 A SPAD-based linear sensor with in-pixel temporal pattern detection for interference and background rejection with smart readout scheme
5.1 Architecture
5.1.1 Pixel architecture
5.1.2 Readout architecture
5.2 Characterization
5.2.1 In-pixel laser pattern detection characterization
5.2.2 Readout performance assessment
5.3 Operating conditions and limits
5.4 Summary

6 SPAD response linearization: histogram-less LiDAR and high photon flux measurements
6.1 Preliminary validation
6.1.1 Typical d-ToF operation
6.1.2 Histogram-less approach
6.2 Mathematical analysis
6.3 Acquisition schemes
6.3.1 Acquisition scheme #1: Acquire or discard
6.3.2 Acquisition scheme #2: Time-gated
6.3.3 Discussion on implementation, expected performance and mathematical analysis
6.3.4 Comparison with state-of-the-art
6.4 Measurement results
6.4.1 Preliminary considerations
6.4.2 Measurements with background light only
6.4.3 Measurements with background and laser light and extraction of the ToF
6.5 Summary

7 Conclusion
7.1 Results
7.1.1 Modelling of SPAD-based d-ToF systems
7.1.2 Comparative evaluation of background-rejection techniques
7.1.3 Interference rejection
7.1.4 Histogram-less and high-flux LiDAR
7.2 Future work and research
Bibliography

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Image Sensors World        Go to the original article...

CNES, ESA, AIRBUS DEFENCE & SPACE, THALES ALENIA SPACE, SODERN, OHB, ISAE SUP’AERO are pleased to invite you to the 8th “Space & Scientific CMOS Image Sensors” workshop to be held in TOULOUSE on November 26th and 27th 2024 within the framework of the Optics and Optoelectronics COMET (Communities of Experts).

The aim of this workshop is to focus on CMOS image sensors for scientific and space applications. Although this workshop is organized by actors of the Space Community, it is widely open to other professional imaging applications such as Machine vision, Medical, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), and Broadcast (UHDTV) that boost the development of new pixel and sensor architectures for high end applications. Furthermore, we would like to invite Laboratories and Research Centers which develop Custom CMOS image sensors with advanced smart design on-chip to join this workshop.

Topics
- Pixel design (high QE, FWC, MTF optimization, low lag,…)
- Electrical design (low noise amplifiers, shutter, CDS, high speed architectures, TDI, HDR)
- On-chip ADC or TDC (in pixel, column, …)
- On-chip processing (smart sensors, multiple gains, summation, corrections)
- Low-light detection (electron multiplication, avalanche photodiodes, quanta image sensors,)
- Photon counting, Time resolving detectors (gated, time-correlated single-photon counting)
- Hyperspectral architectures
- Materials (thin film, optical layers, dopant, high-resistivity, amorphous Si)
- Processes (backside thinning, hybridization, 3D stacking, anti-reflection coating)
- Packaging
- Optical design (micro-lenses, trench isolation, filters)
- Large size devices (stitching, butting)
- High speed interfaces
- Focal plane architectures
- CMOS image sensors with recent space heritage (in-flight performance)

Venue
DIAGORA
Centre de Congrès et d'Exposition. 150, rue Pierre Gilles de Gennes
31670 TOULOUSE – LABEGE

Abstract submission
Please send a short abstract on one A4 page maximum in word or pdf format giving the title, the authors name and affiliation, and presenting the subject of your talk, to L-WCIS24@cnes.fr

Workshop format & official language
Oral presentation shall be requested for the workshop. The official language for the workshop is English.

Slide submission
After abstract acceptance notification, the author(s) will be requested to prepare their presentation in pdf or Powerpoint file format, to be presented at the workshop and to provide a copy to the organizing committee with an authorization to make it available for all attendees, and on-line for the CCT members.

Registration
Registration fee : 100 €.
https://evenium.events/space-and-scientific-cmos-image-sensors-2024/ 

Calendar
13th September 2024 Deadline for abstract submission
11th October 2024 Author notification & preliminary programme
14th October 2024 Registration opening
8th November 2024 Final programme
26th-27th November 2024 Workshop

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TriEye has launched the TES200, a 1.3MP SWIR image sensor for machine vision and robotics. See press release below.

TEL  AVIV,  Israel,  September 3, 2024/ – TriEye, pioneer of the world's first cost-effective,  mass-market  Short-Wave  Infrared  (SWIR)  sensing  technology, announced today the release of the TES200 1.3MP SWIR image sensor. Based on the innovative TriEye CMOS image sensor technology that allows SWIR capabilities using a CMOS manufacturing process, the TES200 is the first commercially available product released in the Raven product family.

The TES200 operates in the 700nm to 1650nm wavelength range, delivering high sensitivity and 1.3MP resolution. With its large format, high frame rate, and low power consumption, the TES200 offers enhanced sensitivity and dynamic range. This makes the new image sensor ideal for imaging and sensing applications across various industries, including automotive, industrial, robotics, and biometrics.

"We are proud to announce the commercial availability of the TES200 image sensor. Our CMOS-based solution has set new standards in the automotive market, and with the rise of new Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, the demand for more sensors and more information has increased. The TES200 now brings these advanced SWIR capabilities to machine vision and robotic systems in various  industries,” said Avi Bakal, CEO of TriEye. “We are excited to offer a solution that delivers a new domain of capabilities in a cost-effective and scalable way, broadening the reach of advanced sensing technology."

The TriEye Raven image sensor family is designed for emerging machine vision and robotics applications,  incorporating  the  latest  SWIR  pixel  and  packaging technologies. The  TES200 is  immediately available in sample quantities and available for production orders with delivery in Q2 2025. 

Experience the TES200 in Action at CIOE and VISION 2024

We invite you to explore the advanced capabilities of the TES200 at the CIOE exhibition, held from September 11 to 13, 2024, at the Shenzhen World Exhibition and  Convention  Center,  China,  within the  Lasers  Technology  &  Intelligent Manufacturing Expo. View the demo at the Vertilas booth no. 4D021, 4D022. Then, meet TriEye’s executive team at VISION 2024 in Stuttgart, Germany, from October 8 to 10, at the TriEye booth no. 8A08, where you can experience a live demo of the TES200 and the brand new Ovi 2.0 devkit, and learn firsthand about our latest developments in SWIR imaging.

About TriEye 

TriEye is the pioneer of the world’s-first CMOS-based Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) image  sensing solutions.  Based  on  advanced  academic  research,  TriEye’s breakthrough technology enables HD SWIR imaging and accurate deterministic 3D sensing  in  all  weather  and  ambient  lighting conditions.  The  company's semiconductor and photonics technology enabled the development of the SEDAR (Spectrum Enhanced Detection And Ranging) platform, which allows perception systems to operate and deliver reliable image data and actionable information, while reducing expenditure up to 100x the existing industry rates. For more information, visit www.trieye.tech

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