Taufkirchen, October 21, 2020 – FRAMOS now offers support for the first industry-standard packaged chip that leverages Event-Based Vision technology, a significant advancement over traditional frame-based vision approaches. The Prophesee Metavision® Packaged Sensor is a series product that can be integrated directly into the customer's machine vision system. A VGA Evaluation Kit and the support of FRAMOS experts make it easy to apply with maximum flexibility.

Sibel Yorulmaz-Cokugur, Sensor Expert at FRAMOS, says: “Under development for the past five years and commercially tested by several customers, this third- generation version houses a Prophesee-enabled VGA-resolution sensor and represents the industry’s first implementation of Event-Based Vision technology in a commercially-viable, industry standard package.”

Partnership for Commercializing Event-Based Vision Technology

Prophesee, inventor of the most advanced neuromorphic vision systems, and FRAMOS, a leading supplier of embedded vision solutions and 3D cameras for industrial applications, have recently announced an agreement that will see FRAMOS become a global distribution and ecosystem partner for Prophesee’s Metavision® line of advanced vision products. The partnership will allow FRAMOS to engineer customized solutions that leverage Prophesee’s breakthrough Event-Based Vision solutions for developing high-performance, lower power machine vision systems, and to identify opportunities to apply the benefit of Event-Based Vision to critical areas in industrial applications, such as production automation and quality assurance.

Robust Toolkit Support

The sensor is supported by a robust development environment that includes a comprehensive software development kit (SDK), a full set of drivers, the Prophesee Player tool for recording sequences, visualizing data, and access to the Prophesee Online Portal, a detailed knowledge center containing useful resources for developers.

The chip, available in a 13x15 mm mini PBGA package, integrates Prophesee’s third generation CMOS Image Sensor (CIS) vision module. It features 640 x 480-pixel resolution with 15 μm pixels in a 3/4” optical format. Further performance highlights include a wide dynamic range of more than 120 dB, a background noise activity of less than 1 mHz, a maximum bandwidth of 66 meps, a low-light cut-off of 0.04 lux, and an ultra-low latency of 40 to 200 microseconds.

Making Event-Based Vision a Commercial Reality

This new packaged version of Prophesee’s Metavision® sensor is aimed at developers of cameras to enable next-generation vision in industrial automation and IoT systems such as robots, inspection equipment, monitoring and surveillance devices. It leverages Prophesee’s use of neuromorphic vision technology to offer highly efficient machine vision capabilities for a variety of use models, including ultra high-speed part counting, vibration measurement and monitoring or kinematic monitoring for predictive maintenance. It allows for unprecedented speed, dynamic range, data volume, and power efficiency.

“This is a major milestone for Prophesee and underscores the progress in commercializing our pioneering Event-Based Vision sensing technology. After several years of testing and prototyping, we can now offer product developers an off-the-shelf means to take advantage of the benefits of our machine vision inventions that move the industry out of the traditional frame-based paradigm for image capture,” said Luca Verre, co-founder and CEO of Prophesee.

Beyond Traditional Frame-Based Systems

In Prophesee Metavision® sensors, each pixel is independent and asynchronous. Each pixel only activates itself if it senses a change in the scene, a movement - an event. This proprietary Event-Based approach allows for major reductions of power, latency and data processing requirements imposed by traditional frame-based systems. It enables sensors to achieve much higher dynamic ranges than commonly associated with high- speed vision. And it allows cost-efficient sensors and systems to record events that would otherwise require conventional cameras to run at 10,000 images/second and more.

The sensor can be used by system developers to improve and in some cases create whole new industrial uses, including accelerating quality assessment on production lines; positioning, sensing and movement guidance for robots to enable better human collaboration; and equipment monitoring (e.g. caused by vibration, kinetic deviations) making the system an asset for predictive maintenance and reduced machine downtime.

Availability and Further Information

• Now available: Prophesee Metavision® Gen3M VGA CIS Vision Sensor for Contrast Detection (CD) Events in an industry-standard, cost-efficient package
• Prophesee Metavision® Sensor Evaluation Kit Gen3M VGA CD available as well
• Details of the Prophesee Metavision® sensor are available here