Intel Indoor LiDAR Webinar

Framos publishes "Introduction to Intel RealSense LiDAR Camera L515" webinar:

Smartsens Announces 2nd Generation DSI Pixel Technology

Smartsens launches two image sensors based on DSI-2 pixel technology, SC233A and SC223A, for surveillance and security cameras. The new 1/2.8-inch 2MP sensors are have 2.9um pixel pitch.

"In 2019, Siteway opened up a new technological path in addition to the traditional FSI and BSI technology, and released the first-generation DSI pixel technology based on its innovative design architecture, which has higher sensitivity and reliability than mainstream FSI technology. Now, Siteway has launched a new generation of DSI-2 technology , which has improved sensitivity and color performance compared with previous generation technology products."

The new sensors feature:

• sensitivity and chroma improvements by 15% and 20% respectively
• through the use of PixGainTM Technology, the full well capacity has more than doubled with enhanced MaxSNR and HDR efficiency
• additionally, the SC233A supports HDR video at 60 fps.
• the new sensors are first products launched by Smartsense with the new China domestic supply chain partners. More products are to follow

Ouyang Jian, Deputy General Manager of Smartsens, says: “Smartsens has always been committed to the creation and improvement of a multilateral supply chain system for common development, and this time it is working with new domestic supply chain partners. The launch of a new generation of DSI-2 technology products is another step forward in the supply chain system, and strives to provide customers with better supply guarantees."

SmartSens’ SC233A and SC223A are available for sampling immediately, with mass production expected in April 2021.

Update: Dongbu Hitek foundry announces Smartsens DSI-2 too.

Actlight Dynamic PhotoDiode Integrated into Foundry Process

PRNewswire: ActLight and a "globally recognized semiconductor foundry" joinly promote the Dynamic PhotoDiode IP. After having produced several samples and having studied the silicon test report, the wafer foundry has acknowledged the sensors outstanding performance and approved the IP to be part of their library in the Analog & Mixed Signal category. The IP based on CMOS 0.18um geometry is now offered globally and ready for volume, high quality productions.   

"We are very pleased to have the opportunity of extending the commercial offer of our innovative photodiode with the support of such a valued partner," said Serguei Okhonin, Co-founder and CEO at ActLight "The partnership acknowledges not only the exceptional performance but as well the maturity of our technology."

LiDAR News: ON Semi, LeddarTech, Velodyne, Insight, Baraja

ON Semi and LeddarTech publish a joint webinar devoted to their common platform and adaptations that each company made in its design to be compatible with the other:

Veolodyne CEO Anand Gopalan gave a couple of interview on its outlook and SPAC merger. Few quotes:

"Is there enough room in the market for all of the lidar companies going public?

The story of the lidar business has been the story of Velodyne charting the course and then a bunch of people following. Even in this case, we went public as being the first pure-play lidar company to go public.

A few of them followed. I think there is room for more than one lidar company, but there may not room for so many. As we look at some of the other players, the two things that I would point to: One is scale. Velodyne produces more sensors in one quarter than all of these other guys have produced combined in 2020, based on their own public statements.

The applications we’re talking about require scale, and require that we can produce more than 100 units a year. Velodyne, based on all public information available out there seems to be the only player who’s by far way ahead of the competition.

What is Velodyne’s M&A strategy going to be in the next year or so?

I’ve said this in public before: There’s three sorts of things we would look for. 

There’s interesting technologies out there, laterally in the lidar space, which are not ready for prime-time yet, but obviously as having been the leader and first mover in the space, we track every single company in the space quite closely. There may be some interesting technologies that we could accelerate their time to market just on the backs of our ability to scale so quickly. 

That’s one type of acquisition that we might find interesting. The other one is, of course, we do see that there are other interesting sensor modalities that could be combined with lidar in certain applications, so definitely there’s opportunities around that.

The third one, which is really going to be a focus area, is that in a lot of these sorts of applications, we see customers looking not just for a sensor package, but looking for really higher levels of intelligence in terms of software and compute that go with the sensor package. They’re really looking for an entire solution, so we do see opportunities there as well.

Why is it taking so much longer than expected to get fully autonomous cars on the road?

I like to describe the autonomous vehicle, or the robotaxi, as kind of the moonshot in the industry, because similar to the moonshot, it’s the most challenging use case. But as a result of investing in that, many of these other applications have now become possible, whether it is these robotics applications like we are talking about or enhanced safety in the context of a consumer vehicle.

How does the delay in the rollout of autonomous passenger cars affect your business model?

We have been fortunate in that we have a very diversified base of customers, so while we have had some of these L4, L5 programs (delayed), we have had things like the supply chain robotics, applications around last-mile delivery to our homes — those applications actually (pushed forward). We had one customer who was going to roll out in 2023 or 2024 who actually pulled in and is rolling out in 2021.

As a result of that, our business has been fairly de-risked from a financial model perspective, so we have benefited from that. And I do believe, ultimately, that L4, L5 robotaxis will eventually come to fruition, and we continue to have a very robust market share in the space.

BisinessWire: Insight demos the pedestrian gesture recognition with its FMCW LiDAR: 

Insight LiDAR announces that its product, Insight 1600, combines high resolution and velocity detection to enable pedestrian gesture recognition. The new capability can be used by AV perception teams to quickly and accurately predict the actions of pedestrians.

Baraja announces it has raised a new investment round of $31M (AUD$40M). The latest capital raising  includes new strategic investment from Hitachi Construction Machinery. Hitachi’s strategic investment comes after a two-year partnership to validate Baraja’s Spectrum-Scan sensors in real-world scenarios that prove the technology’s reliability in harsh environments.

Hideshi Fukumoto, VP, Executive Officer, and CTO, Hitachi Construction Machinery; President of R&D Group; and President of Client Solutions Group, said: “Spectrum-Scan LiDAR is a must-have technology providing better autonomous sensing solutions for mining customers who demand increasingly higher safety and production efficiency. We are delighted to be working with Baraja, a company with leading-edge technology in this field."

Disruptive Inventions in Particle Physics Imaging

Erik Heijne from CERN presented "Disruptive Inventions: Considerations for ECFA Detector R&D Roadmap" at ECFA Detector R&D Roadmap Symposium in March 2021:

Kanematsu Futuretech CIS Packaging

Fujifilm spin-off packaging house Kanematsu Futuretech publishes a Youtube video showing its capabilities:

One More Attempt of Holy Grail Color Router - Splitter

Canadian Western University, ON, publishes an iScience paper "Nanophotonic color splitters for high-efficiency imaging" by Eric Johlin.

Highlights:

• Color splitters focus and sort light into pixels without any absorptive losses
• New single-material splitters are designed to sit directly on a CMOS sensor surface
• Splitters with four or more layers show significant improvements over filters
• Color-corrected and nearly lossless greyscale imaging can be done with one splitter

Summary:

Standard color imaging utilizes absorptive filter arrays to achieve spectral sensitivity. However, this leads to ∼2/3 of incident light being lost to filter absorption. Instead, splitting and redirecting light into spatially separated pixels avoids these absorptive losses. Herein we investigate the inverse design and performance of a new type of splitter which can be printed from a single material directly on top of a sensor surface and are compatible with 800 nm sensor pixels, thereby providing drop-in replacements for color filters. Two-dimensional structures with as few as four layers significantly improve fully color-corrected imaging performance over standard filters, with lower complexity. Being fully dielectric, these splitters additionally allow color-correction to be foregone, increasing the photon transmission efficiency to over 80%, even for sensors with fill-factors of 0.5. Performance further increases with fully 3D structures, improving light sensitivity in color-corrected imaging by a factor of 4 when compared to filters alone.

Graphical Abstract:

0.1aF Detection Accuracy Capacitive Sensor

Japanese ITE Transactions on Media Technology and Applications publishes an invited paper "High Accuracy High Spatial Resolution and Real-Time CMOS Proximity Capacitance Image Sensor Technology and its Applications" by Rihito Kuroda, Masahiro Yamamoto, Yuki Sugama, Yoshiaki Watanabe, Manabu Suzuki, Tetsuya Goto, Toshiro Yasuda, Shinichi Murakami, Yayoi Yokomichi, Hiroshi Hamori, and Shigetoshi Sugawa from Tohoku University and OHT Inc.

"This paper presents a CMOS proximity capacitance image sensor technology achieving 0.1aF detection accuracy with high spatial resolution with real-time imaging capability for industrial, life science, and biometric applications. The proposed image sensor circuits, its working principle and device structures are described in this paper, and additionally, we discuss the foreseen technology roadmap. The fabricated chips with 16um pitch pixels achieved a 0.1aF detection accuracy with the input voltage of 20V, thanks to the employed noise reduction technology. The examples of capacitance imaging using the fabricated CMOS proximity capacitance image sensor are demonstrated."

Facebook's Low Power Image Sensor Tutorial

TinyML Summit publishes a "Tutorial: Image sensors for low power applications" by Song Chen from Facebook Reality Labs. presented on March 22, 2021. The sensor looks identical to the one presented at IEDM 2020 and developed in cooperation with Brillnics:

Caeleste HDR Sensor Presentation

Caeleste publishes an ICSO 2020 Presentation by Bart Dierickx, CTO & co-founder of the company, "Design of a true HDR, backside illuminated image sensor with charge domain binning:"