Check out our CES 2022 coverage.
Coming into CES 2022, Santa Clara-based Omnivision set itself an ambitious agenda: the unveiling of a new corporate identity and logo, as well as a raft of new products spanning its various key market segments. Since its inception in 1995, the fabless-semiconductor company has expanded from being a sensors-only manufacturer into one with analog products as well as touch and display products. It’s coming off a year of impressive growth and is looking to springboard off that success into growth in multiple arenas.
Here’s a look at some of the company’s latest offerings, as well as some collaboration news, grouped by market segment:
In the automotive area, the OX05B1S is claimed as the industry’s first 5-Mpixel RGB-IR global shutter sensor for in-cabin driver/occupant monitoring (see the promo image, top). The device sports a pixel size of just 2.2 µm and 940-nm near-infrared (NIR) sensitivity. The device’s NIR quantum efficiency (QE) of 36% enables it to detect and recognize objects that would elude lesser sensors in low-light conditions. Thanks to its wide field of view and high pixel count, the sensor does the work of two devices by capturing both driver and occupants, reducing size, cost, and BOM costs.
A related collaboration between Omnivision and Australia-based Seeing Machines will yield the automotive industry’s first dedicated driver/occupant monitoring system ASIC. The chip will include an image signal processor and is powered by Seeing Machines’s Occula neural processing unit. Based on Omnivision’s OAX4600 5-Mpixel ASIC (with OX05B1S sensor), the collab with Seeing Machines will result in a tiny device that consumes very little power and fits inside a rearview mirror.
Another new automotive product, the OX03D is an SoC for surround-view systems, rearview systems, and e-mirrors (Figure 1), provides OEMs with an upgrade path from 1 Mpixels to 3 Mpixel resolution. The device houses 2.1-µm pixels into a ¼-inch optical format. The SoC includes an image signal processor, is capable of 140-dB dynamic range, and includes the company’s next-generation tone-mapping algorithm and industry-leading LED flicker mitigation.
For the mobile-handset market, in which Omnivision has seen impressive growth, the company unveiled its OVB0B, a 200-Mpixel image sensors for high-end smartphones (Figure 2). With pixel size of just 0.61 µm, the device’s 16-cell binning delivers high-quality video and previews in 12.5-Mpixel mode, especially in low light. It also provides 100% quad-phase detection technology for fast autofocus performance.
In augmented-reality and virtual-reality (AR/VR) news at CES 2022, the company announced that it’s teaming with Sweden-based Tobii on advanced vision products for the so-called Metaverse. The two companies have developed an eye-tracking reference design based on Omnivision’s BSI global-shutter sensor family. The design homes in on the OC0TA, Omnivision’s smallest camera module for eye tracking applications. Placed inside wearables, the platform determines how fast the wearer’s eyelids and eyes are moving, reducing development time for AR/VR/MR consumer products.