pixels and pictures

The announcement describes two new Intelligent Vision CMOS chip models, the Sony IMX500 and IMX501. From what I can tell these are the same base chip, except that the 500 is the bare chip product, whilst the 501 is a packaged product.

They are both 1/2.3” type chips with 12.3 effective megapixels. It seems clear that the one of the primary markets for the new chip is for security and system cameras. However having AI processes on the chip offers up some exciting new possibilities for future video cameras, particularly those mounted on drones or in action cameras like a GoPro or Insta 360.

One prominent ability of the new chip lies in functions such as object or person identification. This could be via tracking such objects, or in fact actually identifying them. Output from the new chip doesn’t have to be in image form either. Metadata can be output so that it can simply send a description of what it sees without the accompanying visual image. This can reduce the data storage requirement by up to 10,000 times.

For security or system camera purposes, a camera equipped with the new chip could count the number of people passing by it, or identifying low stock on a shop shelf. It could even be programmed to identify customer behaviour by way of heat maps.

For traditional cameras it could make autofocus systems better by being able to much more precisely identifying and tracking subjects. With AI systems like this, it could make autofocus systems more intelligent by identifying areas of a picture that you are likely to be focussing on. For example if you wanted to take a photograph of a flower, the AF system would know to focus on that rather than, say, the tree branch behind it. Facial recognition would also become much faster and more reliable.

Autofocus systems today are becoming incredibly good already, but if they were backed up by ultra fast on-chip object identification they could be even better. For 360 cameras, too, the ability to have more reliable object tracking metadata will help with post reframing.

A specialist medical camera that measures just 0.65 x 0.65 x 1.158mm has just entered the Guinness Book of Records. The size of the grain of sand, it is the camera's tiny sensor that is actually being entered into the record book. 

The OmniVision OV6948 is just 0.575 x 0.575 x 0.232mm and produces a 40,000-pixel color image using an RGB Bayer back-side-illuminated chip. Each photosite measures just 1.75 µm across.

The resolution may seem low, but the OVM6948-RALA camera is designed to fit down the smallest of veins in the human body giving surgeons views that will aid diagnosis and with surgical procedures. Previously the surgeon would carry out these operations blind, or use a much lower-resolution fibre optic feed. 

Manufactured by California-based OmniVision Technologies Inc, the sensor captures its imagery at 30fps, and its analog output can be transmitted over distances of up to 4m with minimal noise. The camera unit offers a 120° super-wide angle of view - so something like a 14mm on a full-frame camera. It gives a depth of field range from 3mm to 30mm.