STMicroelectronics and eYs3D Microelectronics, a fabless semiconductor design house that focuses on end-to-end hardware and software systems for computer vision, including advanced vision-processing system-on-chip (SoC) devices, will reveal the results of their collaboration on high-quality machine vision at CES 2023.
Using live demonstrations, the companies will show how stereo video and depth camera made from advanced active-coded infrared technology can enhance capabilities like feature recognition and autonomous guidance at mid-to-long working range.
"STMicroelectronics' advanced image sensors, using proprietary process technologies, offer class-leading pixel size while offering both high sensitivity and low crosstalk," said James Wang, chief strategy & sales officer at eYs3D Microelectronics. "Such high-performance image sensors, at a competitive price point enable us to achieve extremely compact system size while ensuring outstanding machine-vision performance. The strong connection we have established with ST increases our confidence to develop new products that will lead the machine vision market."
"The collaboration with eYs3D Microelectronics, through their expertise in capture, perception understanding, and 3D-fusion, offers ST additional business opportunities, use cases, and ecosystems addressing demands for stereo vision in applications such as robots, home-automation, home appliances, and many others," said David Maucotel, business line manager at ST's Imaging Sub-Group. "While the reference designs showcased at CES are using monochromatic sensors, we can already foresee exciting enhancements and further use-cases using the RGB and RGB-IR versions of our sensors."
The CES demonstrations highlight two jointly developed reference designs, the Ref-B6 and Ref-B3 ASV (active stereo vision) video and depth cameras. Both combine the eYs3D CV processor and eSP876 stereo 3D Depth-Map chipset with ST's global shutter image sensors that provide enhanced near-infrared (NIR) sensitivity. The embedded eYs3D chipset enhances object edge detection, optimizes depth de-noising, and outputs HD-quality 3D depth data up to 60 fps frame rate. ST's image sensors enable the cameras to output data streams in various combinations of video/depth resolution and frame rate for the best quality depth sensing and point-cloud creation.
In addition, optimized lenses, filters and a VCSEL active-IR projector source optimize the infrared optical path and maximize immunity to ambient light noise. A specially developed control algorithm turns the IR projector on and off alternately to permit capturing artifact-free gray scale images. Leveraging this advance
