e2v Sensors Just Landed on Comet

e2v reports that five of its sensors are installed on ESA Rosetta space probe whose lander part has just landed on comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko - live updates are here. Rosetta was launched in 2004 and in August this year, achieved a milestone of becoming the first spacecraft to orbit a comet’s nucleus. Since then, Rosetta has been orbiting comet 67p and mapping its nucleus in great detail and in September, identified the potential landing site for its lander (Philae). The Philae has landed the comet today at 16:02 GMT.

e2v sensors involved in Rosetta mission:

On Rosetta:

• OSIRIS – the high resolution imaging camera. It has a narrow field and wide field camera.
• NAVCAM – the navigation camera.
• VIRTIS (Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer) – which maps and studies the nature of the solids and the temperature on the surface of the comet. It also identifies gases, characterises the physical conditions of the comet and has helped to identify the best landing site (e2v’s devices are in the visible element of this instrument).

On Philae:

• ÇIVA (Comet nucleus Infrared and Visible Analyzer) – six identical micro-cameras take panoramic pictures of the surface of the comet. A spectrometer studies the composition, texture and albedo (reflectivity) of samples collected from the surface.
• ROLIS (Rosetta Lander Imaging System) – a CCD camera used to obtain high-resolution images during the descent of the lander and take stereo panoramic images of areas sampled by other instruments.

Selecting the Right Image Sensor

Point Grey publishes a video talk of its Director, Vladimir Tucakov, "Selecting The Right Camera Using EMVA 1288 Data, Vision 2014" with a popular explanation of image sensor metrics and their influence on a system performance:

Rumor: Sony to Introduce "Active Pixel Color Sampling" Technology

Chinese-language site cnBeta.com publishes what it says is a datasheet of Sony 1.5-inch 4.85MP IMX189AEG image sensor featuring "Active Pixel Color Sampling." The new stacked sensor features rectangular 9.78um x 4.89um pixels with global shutter. The site says that each pixel can sense three RGB colors. The sensor is planned to be used in an oncoming Sony Xperia Z4 smartphone. Very fast frame rates are quoted:

Another stacked Sony sensor appearing in other cnbeta.com post is 1MP IMX197HSK. It has a square 9.78um global shutter pixel and features high frame rates:

Via Android Headlines.

Rockchip to Enter Image Sensor Market?

International Conference on Optoelectronics and Microelectronics Technology and Application to be held on Nov. 12-14 in Tianjin, China, has an interesting paper by Qinghong Cao, Rockchip Electronics Co., China "A High Sensitivity CMOS Image Sensor Design with Complementary CFA and CCD Compatible Interface." Rockchip is one of the biggest application processors vendors in China, recently entered into a strategic alliance with Intel. The paper might be an early indication that the company is entering the image sensor market.

Update: It appears that Qinghong Cao, the author of the paper, used to work for Brigates, and possibly presents his former work on MCCD.

Novatek Licenses CEVA Imaging and Vision DSP for Its Security SoCs

PR Newswire: CEVA announces that Novatek has selected the CEVA-MM3101 imaging and vision DSP for its next-generation SoC targeting the surveillance, action camera and automotive markets. Novatek will integrate the programmable CEVA-MM3101 into their SoC designs to add computer vision capabilities including scene analysis, machine vision, depth mapping and object detection in a flexible and power efficient manner.

"Integrating advanced vision processing capabilities with our imaging SoCs allows our customers to design products offering a new level of interactivity with the real world and show real product differentiation," Tommy Chen, VP at Novatek. "The CEVA-MM3101 imaging and vision DSP provides the processing horsepower while extending the device battery life and flexibility to implement innovative, intelligent imaging algorithms for any end application."

"We are pleased to partner with Novatek and excited by the potential offered by integrating our advanced imaging and vision DSP into their SoC roadmap," said Gideon Wertheizer, CEO of CEVA. "This is another instance of the growing popularity of the CEVA-MM3101 as a dedicated processor for computer vision and enables Novatek and their customers to reuse the design to address multiple market segments."

CEVA-MM3101 applications

CEVA-MM3101 architecture

Lytro Offers its Lightfield Photography Platform

Imaging Resource: Lytro announces Lytro Platform and Lytro Development Kit (LDK) opening a possibility to design a customized light field camera for any application.

LDK illustration. Actual may differ from the illustration.

LDK illustration. Actual may differ from the illustration.

Is Mobile Future Square?

One of the recent mobile phone trends is a dual rear camera where the two cameras are 90-deg rotated with respect to each other to shoot pictures in horizontal and vertical direction, such as in Pixavi ImpactX phone:

Omnivision patent application US20140320715 "Imaging systems and methods using square image sensor for flexible image orientation" by Bahman Haji-khamneh, Harish Iyer, and Vinoo Margasahayam, implements this feature with a single square image sensor: