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PointGrey publishes a video on what it means to manufacture 250,000 machine vision cameras a year:

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I missed it at the time when ISSCC published its 2016 Trends presentation:

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Xilinx publishes a Youtube video demoing embedded vision capabilities of its Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC:

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Macrumors reports that Apple is to open a research lab in Grenoble, France focused on developing image sensors, according to French newspaper Dauphiné Libéré, with details posted in iPhon.fr.

Apple is said to have a team of dozen researchers and engineers working on imaging R&D for more than a year at Minatec, in collaboration with STMicro. Apple plans to have approximately 30 engineers in the new research lab, which will occupy about 800 sq. m.


Thanks to RP for the link!

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Chipworks publishes a reverse engineering report of the latest ST ToF sensor:

1. SPAD TOF sensing circuits 2. PMU to the SPAD circuit 3. IR Emitter Driver

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Aalto University, Espoo, Finland, publishes MsC Thesis "Performance Evaluation of Time-of-Flight Depth Cameras" by Matti Laukkanen. Three ToF cameras are compared: MESA SR4000 (released in 2010), Panasonic DIMager EKL-3106 (2012) and Microsoft Kinect v2 (2014). Few comparisons:


"Overall, Kinect v2 can be considered as the winner of the trio. Compared to the other two devices, it offers approximately ten times more pixels and a significantly larger FOV at a fraction of the price. It is also the most accurate, as it can achieve up to millimetre precision. SR4000 is at its best almost as accurate, but on the other hand it is highly sensitive to background light. D-IMager differs significantly from the other two, as its depth accuracy is nearly tenfold lower."

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René von Fintel, Head of Product Market Management at Basler, says about transition from CCD to CMOS cameras after last year's Sony's announcement that production of CCD sensors would be ending:

"The switchover is moving forward surprisingly quickly in terms of the adoption of CMOS sensors for new design-ins within facilities and systems. Most customers have taken the imminent discontinuation of Sony's CCD sensors as an occasion to reconsider their current CCD cameras and replace them at the next possible opportunity with CMOS-based cameras. This makes sense for two reasons: New CMOS cameras can deliver faster speeds and better image quality on the one hand, yet through their low prices also offer a better price/performance ratio on the other."

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BusinessWire: The 8MP KAI-08052 CCD is the first device in ON Semiconductor’s CCD portfolio with enhanced NIR response, provides up to twice the sensitivity in NIR as the company’s standard Interline Transfer CCD pixel design.

The new 5.5um CCD pixel design used in the KAI-08052 extends the electron capture region deeper in the silicon to better capture electrons generated by long wavelength photons. This deeper pixel well improves detection of NIR wavelengths by up to a factor of two depending on the specific wavelength studied. And since the well structure also isolates the photodiodes from each other, this increase in NIR sensitivity comes without any reduction in image sharpness.

“Camera manufacturers and end customers continue to confirm that products based on both CCD and CMOS technologies will be needed in these markets, making it important that we continue to develop and advance both of these technologies,” said Herb Erhardt, VP and GM, Industrial and Security Division, Image Sensor Group at ON Semiconductor. “The KAI-08052 provides a significant improvement in NIR sensitivity compared to our standard pixel design, and we look forward to utilizing this technology in additional products in the future.”

As always, ON Semi is very open in releasing the actual performance info:

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Samsung patent application US20160054172 "Image sensor for producing vivid colors and method of manufacturing the same" by Sookyoung Roh, Sunghyun Nam, Seokho Yun, and Hongkyu Park proposes a color splitter to improve sensitivity of image sensor:

"Although organic dye color filters are widely used in color image sensors, such organic dye color filters absorb light in all but one certain wavelength band. Therefore, using such color image sensors may cause a relatively large amount of light energy loss and a low light efficiency."

So, a color separating beam splitter is proposed. The splitter is made of high refractive material diagonal stripe located inside a low refracting material layer:


Apparently, the simulation show quite high efficiency of the proposed color division scheme comparing with the traditional die based CFA:

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Omnivision's patent application US20160104735 "Dual-Mode Image Sensor With A Signal-Separating Color Filter Array, And Method For Same" by Jin Li, Qian Yin, and Dyson Hsinchih Tai proposes RGB-IR CFA:

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ON Semi's new Mobile Consumer Division demos PDAF performance of its recently announced 13MP 1.1um pixel AR1337 sensor:



Another video shows Python 25MP, 82fps global shutter operation:

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Albert Theuwissen publishes an excellent series of posts "Butting Versus Stitching" comparing different ways to combine large format image sensor out of smaller parts, some of them quite exotic - part 1, part 2.

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Imager No-Mania quotes Watch.Impress article on Sony presentation at 2016 VLSI Symposium. The 4K, 480fps sensor based on 5.86um global shutter pixel is used in a newly announced HDC-4800 video camera. The sensor features a dual gain ramp ADC stripes placed on top of the image sensor die:

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Automotive News: Japan became one of the first countries allowing vehicles to use cameras instead of mirrors, beginning June 17, 2016. EU too is expected to revise its local regulations this year, while the US is seen adopting the mirrorless standard in 2018, and China is expected to do it too in the coming years.

The promise of mirrorless cars is sparking a rush of suppliers to the technology, including Japan's Ichikoh Industries and Germany's Robert Bosch GmbH. By 2023, about 29 percent of the Japanese market or about 2.3M vehicles, are expected to have video monitors as interior mirrors. At the same time, it's forecasted that about 12% of the market, or about 900,000 vehicles, will have cameras in place of exterior sideview mirrors.

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Light, a startup developing its L16 multi-aperture computational camera, announces it has closed a $30M series C round of funding, led by GV (formerly Google Ventures). On the way to its first product, the company releases a Vimeo video showing how the L16 prototypes are being manufactured:

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Toshiba reports a success with its image recognition LSI for ADAS applications:

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Design News: Researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (UW-Madison) developed the bioinspired photosensitivity enhancer (BPE), an "artificial eye" inspired by creatures that live deep under the ocean, where light is scarce. Their paper is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS):

"Artificial eye for scotopic vision with bioinspired all-optical photosensitivity enhancer" by Hewei Liu, Yinggang Huang, and Hongrui Jiang

From the abstract: "to date, strategies toward improving low-light imaging primarily focus on developing electronic image sensors. Inspired by natural scotopic visual systems, we adopt an all-optical method to significantly improve the overall photosensitivity of imaging systems. Such optical approach is independent of, and can effectively circumvent the physical and material limitations of, the electronics imagers used. We demonstrate an artificial eye inspired by superposition compound eyes and the retinal structure of elephantnose fish. The bioinspired photosensitivity enhancer (BPE) that we have developed enhances the image intensity without consuming power, which is achieved by three-dimensional, omnidirectionally aligned microphotocollectors with parabolic reflective sidewalls. Our work opens up a previously unidentified direction toward achieving high photosensitivity in imaging systems."

The main idea is to condense the light into a smaller area by means of "thousands of microphotocollectors (μ-PCs). The miniaturized, low-cost, and zero-power-consumption device presented here can be implemented independently in imaging systems, or combined with other image enhancement technologies." A 2x-3x improvement in light sensitivity has been reported:

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e2v’s image sensors have accurately guided NASA’s Juno spacecraft to reach its destination, Jupiter. e2v’s TH7890 512 x 512 17 micron pixel front illuminated area array image sensors for star-trackers were provided by e2v’s manufacturing centre in Grenoble. They have been used to determine the orientation of the spacecraft by measuring its position relative to stars. These optical devices were specifically designed to ensure very high pointing accuracy and stability over long periods and to survive the severe radiation surrounding the planet, as Juno flies closer to the gas giant than any other spacecraft ever before.

JunoCam will use a ON Semi's KAI-2020 CCD to provide the first color pictures of Jupiter’s cloud tops from orbit. The imaging capabilities of JunoCam will be impressive. The camera will capture data in four separate wavelength bands: blue (420–520 nm), green (500–600 nm), and red (600–800 nm) for reconstruction of a color image; plus a band from 880–900 nm to image a narrow absorption of methane centered at 889 nm. And the 3 km resolution available at closest approach (an order magnitude better than that available from the Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini probes) will enable viewing of small-scale structures in the atmosphere.

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CEA-Leti and EPFL pre-announces its paper on fast and low noise image sensor based on thin-oxide pmos SF, to be published in September issue of JSSC:

A Sub-0.5 Electron Read Noise VGA Image Sensor in a Standard CMOS Process
Boukhayma, Assim; Enz, Christian; Peizerat, Arnaud

Abstract:

A sub-0.5e−rms temporal read noise VGA (640H×480V) CMOS image sensor has been integrated in a standard 0.18μm 4PM CMOS process. The low noise performance is achieved exclusively through circuit optimization without any process refinements. The presented imager relies on a 4T pixel of 6.5μm pitch with a properly sized and biased thin oxide PMOS source follower. A full characterization of the proposed image sensor, at room temperature, is presented. With a pixel bias of 1.5μA the sensor chip features an input-referred noise histogram from 0.25 e−rms to a few e−rms peaking at 0.48 e−rms. The imager features a full well capacity of 6400 e− and its frame rate can go up to 80 fps. It also features a fixed pattern noise as low as 0.77%, a lag of 0.1% and a dark current of 5.6e-/s. It is also shown that the implementation of the in-pixel n-well does not impact the quantum efficiency of the pinned photo-diode.

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CEVA introduces CDNN2 (CEVA Deep Neural Network), its second generation neural network software framework for machine learning. Coupled with the CEVA-XM4 intelligent vision processor, CDNN2 offers significant time-to-market and power advantages for implementing machine learning in embedded systems for smartphones, ADAS, surveillance equipment, drones, robots and other camera-enabled smart devices.

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Pixelteq presents its pixel-level Multispectral Imaging (MSI) color filters:



Other presentations from Conference on Hyperspectral Imaging in Industry 2016 (CHII2016) held on June 15-16 in Graz, Austria, can be found here.

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Somebody sent me a picture of a compact single-lens dual sensor "USB security camera." The unknown type image sensors placed side-by-side under the single lens:


Is anybody able to figure out the purpose of such a strange integration?

Update: An additional hint I received from the person who sent me the original images is "This sensor(s) is on a module which I believe is responsible for distance measurement (using computer vision), coupled with a laser pointer."

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Reuters, EETimes: BMW, Intel, and Mobileye announce an alliance to develop autonomous driving technology that could put Level 5 autonomous driving cars on the road by around 2021. The new autonomous driving platform is said to be open for others to join. The platform is supposed to be a part of the international standard that defines sensor specs in the system, among many other things.

Mobileye says it will put at least 100 employees working on this project, out of its current headcount of 700. Intel says it will put several hundreds people and several hundred million dollars on this project. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said that he's confident that they can achieve their autonomous driving target in 5 years.


Update: Mobileye publishes a promotional video emphasizing the importance of this 3-way agreement:

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Jeff Quitney found a 1956 movie "The Story of Television" featuring RCA's David Sarnoff and Vladimir Zwyorikin talking about the early iconoscope and vidicon tubes. Initially, Vladimir Zwyorikin asked for $100,000 budget to develop the television. In the end, it costed RCA $50M to develop B&W TV and then another $70M to make a color version:



There is also an earlier version of this video with somewhat lower quality of video and sound.

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While most of the industry is yet to reach Gigapixel resolutions, MIT explores image processing approaches for the next step - Terapixel images. MsC thesis "Terapixel Image Processing and Simulation with Distributed Halide" by Tyler Denniston proposes distributed multi-core processing on NERSC Cori supercomputer to do that. The results are not very encouraging so far: no matter how many processing nodes are used, the camera ISP pipeline does not speed up enough:

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Delft University publishes a very nice PhD Thesis "Fundamental Characteristics of a Pinned Photodiode CMOS Pixel" by Yang Xu. Other than a lot of basic stuff on PPD principles and characterization, the thesis discusses some of the more advanced things, like optimizations for image lag and charge transfer speed:

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New Imaging Technologies' latest logarithmic InGaAs offers short gating mode in QVGA and VGA resolution. The new version of its WiDy SWIR cameras allows low exposure time (down to 200ns) and low jitter (10ns) with minimum trigger delay of 200ns for pulsed illumination. The new cameras have 3 in-pixel memories for true CDS or in VGA - current highest resolution on the market - they come with dedicated software offering programmable trigger delay with customizable very short steps for trigger in or out synchronization.

Measured Shutter Efficiency with a phase shifted 4ns laser pulse

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ST releases its ToF development board in a form of Arduino Uno shield:

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1. Open source Sensors Journal publishes a paper on 75ps gated pixel "A 75-ps Gated CMOS Image Sensor with Low Parasitic Light Sensitivity" by Fan Zhang and Hanben Niu, Shenzhen University, China. Their pixel is mostly circuit-based:


2. Another paper "Quantum Random Number Generation Using a Quanta Image Sensor" by Emna Amri, Yacine Felk, Damien Stucki, Jiaju Ma, and Eric R. Fossum from ID Quantique, Switzerland and Dartmouth College, USA, presents an improvement on the image sensor based random number generators:


3. Guillaume Renault publishes a Youtube video presentation of Invisage's Quantum Film sensor.

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