PR Newswire: Korea-based eWBM Ltd. announces DR1151 SoC that calculates the relative distance to the object with a single-lens Dual Aperture camera. Dual Aperture's 4-color 3D imaging solution extracts RGB and IR signals by single image sensor. eWBM SoC is said to operate at more than 30fps speed with low power.
"As DR1151 has attracted a lot of interest from related companies before it was released, it will be available to customers at home and abroad from the end of February, when the test is completed. We also expect that a full-fledged sales of DR1151 will be carried out from the second half of this year when the applications has been developed," Wookon Koh, the head of marketing for eWBM, said.
DR1151 can be used for various applications such as 3D gesture recognition, gaming, distance-sensitive CCTV, automative collision avoidance systems, contactless fingerprint, single-lends laparoscope and etc. It also can be used to improve functionality of the smart phone camera-high-precision autofocusing macro, focus changes after imaging, 3D background removal and etc. eWBM has attracted an investment of $8,000,000 from Value Invest Korea last year for the commercialization of its next generation imaging technology.
"DR1151 will lead very significant changes in the camera sensor market. It will be the first year for eWBM to become the de facto representative of SoC fabless companies through a successful fab-out of DR1151," said Stephen Sang-geun Oh, CEO of eWBM.
What is "Single Lens, dual aperture" - does this mean a single lens barrel but then two "holes" within the single barrel? Are there any mirrors or other elements in the barrel to control light? If not, are the apertures situated so they point the light at only a certain part of the sensor? It says that the IR aperture is narrower, but how would that make it different if both lenses are focusing on the entire array?
ReplyDeleteSee Dual Aperture's patent application here:
Deletehttp://image-sensors-world.blogspot.co.il/2013/10/silicon-file-and-dual-aperture-to.html
It's a smart plan, I must say. But also somewhat like the 'pan-focus' or whatever solutions that had each color in a different focus distance, and processed the mess together to look sharp again.
ReplyDeleteSince the solution requires not filtering the NIR, I wonder how they remove the NIR components in each RGB channels which is key for good color accuracy ?
ReplyDelete