Microsoft Confirms Primesense is Behind Project Natal 3D Camera

CVG: Xbox 360 hardware VP, Ilan Spillinger said: "PrimeSense has delivered an important component to the technology, helping us deliver revolutionary controller-free entertainment experiences in the living room".

Update: Slashgear publishes an extended article on Primesense technology, including the official PR.

Update #2: Official PR appears on Business Wire site.
Primesense published a brief system spec:

Kodak Officially Announces W-RGB CCDs for HD Video

An official PR on Kodak site announces that it is deploying the TRUESENSE W-RGB Color Filter on the 1080p/60fps format KODAK KAI-02150 CCD, which is said to enable "the capture of color images with the sensitivity typically associated with monochrome cameras... users can realize a 2x to 4x increase in light sensitivity (from one to two photographic stops) compared to a standard Bayer color sensor". Kodak also sent me a pdf file with high-resolution comparison pictures that support this claim (click on pictures to expand):

Kodak is also expanding its HD image sensor portfolio with addition of a new 1/2-inch 720p/130fps format CCD based on 5.5um pixels - also available with the TRUESENSE Color Filter Pattern. In addition, both the 720p and 1080p image sensors will be available in a smaller, CLCC package configuration to enable development of more compact camera designs.

To assist manufacturers in modifying their camera software to work with this new color filter pattern, Kodak has developed a set of tools that document the new image path used by sensors that deploy this technology. Providing both an overview as well as a practical implementation of the software algorithms used, these tools can be used not only to modify an existing image path to work with the new color filter pattern data, but also to compare the results of that implementation to a reference image path provided by Kodak.

Engineering Grade devices of the KAI-02150 with the KODAK TRUESENSE Color Filter Pattern are available today, and Standard Grade devices are scheduled to be available in Q2, 2010. The KAI-01150 will be available in monochrome, Bayer Color, and KODAK TRUESENSE Color Filter Pattern configurations. Engineering Grade devices of the KAI-01150 are scheduled to be available beginning in Q4, 2010, with Standard Grade devices scheduled to be available Q1, 2011.

Imatest IS Edition to Work with Toshiba Sensors

PR Newswire: Up until now, Imatest Image Sensor (IS) Edition has been only interfaced with sensors from Aptina and OmniVision. Now Toshiba and Imatest have teamed up to enhance Imatest's IS Edition for configuring Toshiba image sensors.

Nemotek Expands its WLC and WLO Production Base

PR Newswire: Morocco-based Tessera's licensee Nemotek has placed a repeat order for EV Group's bonding and UV nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) systems – the EVG520IS and IQ Aligner. EVG's IQ Aligner is said to be the only industry-proven, high-volume manufacturing solution for wafer lens molding and stacking available today.

Kodak Announces W-RGB CCDs (Again?)

Kodak Plugged-In blog has a post about advantages of CCDs with W-RGB filters. The post also mentions that two such CCDs were announced today: 1080p KAI-02150 and 720p KAI-01150 (no formal PR, as of now). At least one of them was already demoed about half a year ago.

More (of the same) about Invisage

IEEE Spectrum published a general article on quantum dot potential for IR sensing, written by Invisage CTO Ted Sargent. Somehow the article does not mention Invisage. In addition Spectrum also published a video report from DEMO event explaining Invisage concept and showing its 1.1um pixel demo, including the demo board:



Another Youtube video shows Jess Lee demonstrating a wafer with sensors and a sputtering machine to make the sensing layer:



Update: Optics.org published Invisage article titled "Timer set for silicon sensor switchover".

Omnivision Diversifies

PR Newswire: Omnivision acquired Aurora Systems, a privately-held company in California. Aurora is a supplier of LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) devices for use in mobile projection applications and high definition home theater projection systems.

OmniVision acquired all outstanding shares of Aurora for approximately $5.0M. Of this amount, $0.5M has been placed in escrow for a period of up to one year for purposes of compensating OmniVision for certain specified damages that it may incur.

"We are very excited by the growing popularity of image projection systems in consumer devices. With the acquisition of Aurora, we expect to capitalize on this trend in the emerging video-centric consumer market, expand our product portfolio and offer even more innovative and comprehensive imaging solutions to our customers," said Shaw Hong, president and chief executive officer of OmniVision.

Update: Incidentally, in May 2009 Micron too acquired a maker of LCOS displays DisplayTech.

Invisage Shows 1.1um B&W Pixel

As someone mentioned in comments to Invisage patents post, there is a 6+ min Invisage video from the DEMO event showing its QuantumFilm sensor working, albeit B&W only. In the video Jess Lee says that the pixel size is 1.1um. Here it is:

NocturnalVision Start-Up Presents at Image Sensors Europe Conference

CNET publishes notes from Image Sensors Europe conference being held in London these days. One of the articles talks about Swedish start-up called NocturnalVision developing spatio-temporal filtering of video stream to improve low-light performance. Henrik Malm, a professor at Sweden-based Lund University and co-founder of the start-up presented his technique. In a nutshell, it analyzes what's going on across each frame of an image--the spatial component--and what's going on from one frame to the next-the temporal component-to try to intelligently direct the noise reduction process.

This is the same technique that New Scientist talked about two months ago. So far Toyota spent 6M SEK supporting the research and has rights to the technology for automotive applications, Malm said, and NocturnalVision has rights elsewhere. The company is seeking venture capital and also is in talks with Sony Ericsson, Malm said.

Because of multi-frame nature of the noise reduction algorithm there's a delay of about six frames before the image processing can kick in. Also, the algorithm is quite resource-hungry, so the company uses Nvidia GForce 880GTX for parallel processing and is still limited by 6fps speed for VGA image, but Malm expects to improve it to 30fps with new hardware.

Another CNET note from the conference talks about efforts to standartize camera phone image quality and DxO Labs work in that direction.

PTC and RTS, Tutorial Goes On

Albert Theuwissen continues his excellent series of PTC tutorials, now adding RTS noise. This becomes the biggest image sensor tutorial available for free on the net!