Assorted News: Brookman, Smartsens, AIStorm, Cista, Prophesee, Unispectral, SiLC, Velodyne, Himax

Brookman demos the absence of interference between its 4 pToF cameras working simultaneously:



Smartsens reports it has garnered three awards from the 2020 China IC Design Award Ceremony and Leaders Summit —co-presented by EE Times China, EDN China, and ESMC China. SmartSens won awards in three categories: Outstanding Technical Support: IC Design Companies, Popular IC Products of the Year: Sensors/MEMS, and Silicon 100.

Other imaging companies on EE Times Silicon 100 list of Emerging Startups to Watch are AIStorm, Cista Systems, Prophesee, Unispectral, SiLC

Bloomberg reports that a blank-check company Graf Industrial Corp. is in talks to merge with Velodyne Lidar in a deal that would take Velodyne public. Graf Industrial Corp. has been established in 2018 as as a blank check company with an aim to acquire one and more businesses and assets, via a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, and reorganization. Merging with a blank-check company has become a popular way for companies to go public, as the coronavirus pandemic upends the markets.

GlobeNewswire: Himax launches of WiseEye WE-I Plus HX6537-A AI platform that supports Google’s TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers.

The Himax WiseEye solution is composed of the Himax HX6537-A processor and Himax Always-on sensor. With support to TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers, developers are able to take advantage of the WE-I Plus platform as well as the integrated ecosystem from TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers to develop their NN based edge AI applications targeted for Notebook, TV, Home Appliance, Battery Camera and IP Surveillance edge computing markets.

The processor remains in low power mode until a movement/object is identified by accelerators. Afterwards, DSP coped with the running NN inference on TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers kernel will be able to perform the needed CV operation to send out the metadata results over TLS (Transport Level Security) protocol to main SOC and/or cloud service for application level operation. The average power consumption for Google Person Detection example inference could be under 5mW. Additionally, average Himax Always-on sensor power consumption can be less than 1mW.

“Himax WE-I Plus, coupled with Himax AoS image sensors, broadens TensorFlow Lite ecosystem offering and provides developers with possibilities of high performance and ultra low power,” said Pete Warden, Technical Lead of TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers at Google.