Smart sensor targets advanced machine vision
MARCH 11, 2009--A new smart image sensor aims to lower the cost of automotive, industrial, and consumer electronics. It integrates a DSP chip with a CMOS imager, according to the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM; Neuchatel, Switzerland; www.csem.ch ), which will unveil its system-on-chip at the 2009 International Solid-State Circuits Conference.
The Icycam sensor, the result of nearly a decade of research at CSEM, is said to build intelligence into firmware, enabling low-cost automotive vision and smart security systems, as well as for optical character recognition.
"Icycam is a new technology based on the combination of our previous CMOS image sensor plus a DSP, and the whole system is on one piece of silicon," said Edo Franzi, CSEM's section head for sensory information processing. The new image array is QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) and features a digital logarithmic compressor. For more information, go to: http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=213300424
-- Posted by Conard Holton, Vision Systems Design, www.vision-systems.com