Presentation at SSI International 2021 are grouped into 4 key themes which collectively provide complete coverage of the global sensors industry.
If you are interested in speaking at SSI International 2021, please contact info@sensorsinternational.net or call +44 (0)2476 718 970.
The applications of LIDAR are so broad that seem to be only limited by human imagination. In recent (and not so recent) years we have seen the constant consideration and deployment of LIDARs for distance measurements in agriculture, archaeology, automotive, geology, atmospheric monitoring, law enforcement, military, mining, astronomy,.. But every application has their own by their system integrators, with different degrees of difficulty and maturity. In particular, in the automotive industry, some OEMs envision to place LIDARs in headlights and taillights, bumpers, roof, and other places in the car, at low cost, high durability, low maintenance, high stability, etc. Each of these locations with different required specifications. The goal of this panel is to bring together different TIER1 suppliers and OEMs from different market segments and applications, and discuss the challenges and opportunities for the LIDAR supply chain.
As autonomous vehicles (AV) are closer to becoming reality, it becomes mandatory to be able to characterise the performance of the sensors before production. This analysis calls for large amounts of ground truth data to be established with precise information about the real world position and pose of the objects around the vehicle. In this talk, we would like introduce to AI enabled sensor data analytics tool realized with novel deep learning techniques with support for plethora of AV sensors like RADAR,LIDAR ,Camera etc., which can help to reduce significant manual efforts thus reducing the production time of AV.
Join Heinz Oyrer, Director of Strategic Partnerships at LeddarTech as he explores the ADAS and AD automotive landscape, along with the current challenges and the technology presently employed. As this landscape evolves, automakers realize that their specific design requirements often require a more open, flexible and scalable sensing platform that accommodates an array of sensor options. Additionally, advanced driver assistance systems are rapidly becoming more and more sophisticated through advancements in obstacle detection and classification that identify and correct driver errors, thus reducing collisions and injuries. Therefore, the focus of this session will be to explore the key benefits of a sensing platform approach as opposed to a black-box solution in addressing ADAS and AD requirements across the value chain.
LiDAR sensors have changed form-factor from rotating spindles to frustum designs, but have remained “passive”, with a fixed set of specifications due to inherent limitations of coaxial architectures. To adapt for the countless challenging scenarios encountered on the roadways, AEye has created an “adaptive” LiDAR sensor, wherein the transmit aperture is separated from its receiving aperture through a patented bistatic design. In this session, Mrinal discusses how independent aperture optimization allows software to trigger unique “performance modes” to overcome automotive edge cases.
Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) have evolved from low power data communications applications to high volume 3D sensing applications over the last several years. This was enabled by creating a high volume, low cost, high reliability manufacturing platform that included chip design, wafer fabrication, and laser test. Having already shipped over 1 Billion high power VCSEL chips, Lumentum is pioneering new manufacturing advances that will address advanced applications including Automotive LiDAR, AIoT, AR/VR/MR, wearables, and biometric identification. This presentation will describe new VCSEL design and manufacturing approaches that allow addressable arrays using multi-junction materials to reach higher power, greater efficiency, and improve design flexibility. We will also discuss how these VCSEL advances are well matched to state-of-the-art sensors that improve LiDAR and other sensing systems.
In recent years there has been increasing interest in sensor technologies across a wide range of applications. Whilst industrial and consumer applications have driven the first wave of sensor activities, the acceleration of connected autonomous vehicles is focussing attention on advanced sensor technologies such as LiDAR. Dr Furlong's presentation shines a light on the key materials developments that provide the underpinning technologies that are essential to make LiDAR enabled autonomous vehicles a reality in terms of both cost and performance.
Computers once lived on our desktops and then they migrated to our pockets. The future is computers leaving our pockets and interacting with the physical world, whether it’s self-driving cars, robots, or AR goggles that help us interact with the world. For this to happen, all of these machines need to see the world not just in colour, but in 3D. Lidar is the go-to 3D sensor, but today even "low-cost” lidar sensors sell for hundreds of dollars and are the size of a shoe box. We believe the potential of autonomy and AR will be fully realized when lidar becomes as ubiquitous as cameras, of which there are about 10 billion sold every year. This immense scale can only happen when the powers of standard semiconductor manufacturing are brought to lidar, making lidar sensors tiny, low-cost, solid-state and ultimately ubiquitous. This talk will discuss new approaches being developed that address the cost, power and size challenges to democratizing lidar, including CMOS-based liquid crystal metasurfaces for scalable and flexible solid-state beam steering in lidar.
There is no other time in recent history that so many disparate industries have been affected simultaneously by a single trend like autonomy. Lidar is really the last frontier of sensing technologies that has the power to transform industries but has yet to be brought into the modern age. Ouster invented digital lidar by using a unique combination of VCSEL/SPAD technology, which offers a combination of the highest performance at the lowest cost in the industry. It vastly improves upon analog technology in size, weight, form factor, power efficiency, and durability. We are now reaching a tipping point in digital lidar adoption which is fostering automation across the supply chain. Digital lidar sensors can be found on autonomous mining vehicles and ships, gantry cranes, forklifts, trucks and shuttles, and last-mile delivery robots. This talk will dive into the implications of introducing silicon to lidar and how it is enabling revolutionary autonomy across industries.
Beyond Automotive applications, many other uses cases can leverage the unique value of 3D LiDAR data, including not only mobile robotics but also vehicle and pedestrian flow monitoring , security and industrial applications. However, effectively using LiDAR data in real-time is a complex, expensive, and a long endeavour even for the best 3D expert engineers. The lack of any standard makes it also even more challenging and threatens to slow down market adoption. In this presentation will show how a real-time pre-processing engine changes the game, allowing application developers and integrators to seamlessly use LiDAR data from any hardware supplier. Specific use cases and real-life LiDAR recordings will be used to illustrate the practical applications.
The automotive industry is going through a rapid transformation, driven by electrification, autonomous vehicles, driver support systems, as well as changes in mobility patterns and city infrastructure. The increased need for sensors in vehicles, in the electric/hybrid drivetrains and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) up to autonomous driving systems, creates new significant opportunities for the integrated photonics industry. PhotonDelta has created a roadmap that provides an overview of the different trends in the automotive sector and list the opportunities for integrated photonics technology. The roadmap was created together with various stakeholders from the industry and provides a deeper understanding of the various applications in which integrated photonics can play a role, with a strong focus on FMCW LiDAR and Fiber Bragg Grating interrogators.
One of the most basic challenges for ADAS and AV is the ability to operate in all weather and lighting conditions. Increasingly, sensing solution architects are realizing existing sensor fusion solutions (including radar, lidar, and standard cameras) are unable to detect and recognize potential hazards under common low-visibility conditions: night-time, fog, haze, etc. Meaning machine vision algorithms are unable to make reliable and safe driving decisions. TriEye is breaking the sensor fusion status-quo with a CMOS-based Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) HD-camera. Based on advanced nanophotonics research, enabling fabrication of low-cost SWIR sensors at scale, solving the low visibility challenge for OEMs and T1s.
Higher performance detectors are required for accurate, small form factor, low-cost, scalable LiDAR systems targeting long and short-range applications. SiPM and SPAD arrays are fast becoming the sensor of choice for both long and short-range LiDAR systems and are displacing legacy detectors such as linear avalanche photodiodes (APDs), owing to their high internal gain enabling single photon sensitivity and excellent uniformity across pixels. ON Semiconductor has a range of SiPM products with industry-leading sensitivity along with a unique Fast output mode which facilitates higher count rates. As the detector becomes more sensitive, the optical and signal chain requirements also change. A particular pain point for system designers, especially those used to working with legacy detectors, is how to start working with SiPMs and integrating them into their system. To ease this engineering design process, ON Semiconductor provides a wide range of evaluation kits which can help customers start making measurements quickly with SiPMs and reference designs which can be leveraged in part or in whole in a new LiDAR design. The kits range from simple readout boards for initial lab evaluation to facilitate learning to more advanced ready-to -use LiDAR reference designs. This presentation will detail the sensors used for direct time-of-flight LiDAR with a focus on the benefits of SiPM technology, along with the evaluation boards available. It will also cover the main types of LiDAR signal chains and the reference designs and kits available to date.
In the past, LiDAR systems struggled with a number of problems: they were lacking in efficiency and robustness and were far too expensive for the automotive mass market. LiDAR sensors based on MEMS mirrors are a promising solution. However, MEMS mirrors available today have small mirror sizes of a few millimeters. Their performance in terms of range and field of view is therefore limited. Blickfeld has developed its own MEMS mirrors. With generous dimensions of more than 10 millimeters mirror diameter, which enables better performance. The mirror size is determined by various factors, which Blickfeld will discuss in this talk.
IHS Markit will provide an overview of the different flavours of LiDAR , the supply chain, commercial aspects and the potential for each. Further, IHS Markit research will benchmark different LiDAR implementation approaches regarding cost, maturity timeline, and integration with other sensors. A review of the current LiDAR supply chain will also be given covering the big players as well as some promising start-ups.
Requirements necessary for automotive applications of LiDAR systems are of type Multi-Dimensional Problems and can be mainly described as follows: a. High-Resolution (at least VGA: ~300K pixels) and b. 25 Frames per second and c. Distance-Resolution of ~5 cm and d. Coverage Distance ca. 250m and e. Eye-Safety and f. Robust against Noisy Environment and g. Reliable Current LiDAR systems meet these requirements individually but does not meet them all. Hence, there is a big gap between the requirements and available solutions in the market. Hence, producing LiDAR systems satisfying the above whole requirements at the same time is extremely useful and on demand. This speech aims to provide information on details of filling such a gap.
An insider perspective on how leading self-driving perception teams interpret top-line lidar specifications such as resolution, field of view, points per second, and foveation for meeting the fundamental technical challenges of self-driving.
Digital olfaction mimics the human sense of smell by capturing odor signatures for display and analysis. By integrating digital olfaction sensors into wearable technology, we can use odor data for a host of powerful consumer health use cases—from enhanced stress indicators to hygiene monitoring. A silicon photonic solution functionalized with biosensors is sensitive enough to distinguish hundreds of odors while reducing sensor size and costs. This low cost, high volume solution is enabling innovation in consumer and digital health applications.
Functional inks and printed electronics solutions are offered by Henkel for many years to enable production of traditional membrane switches and more recent smart sensors. Using printed circuits, this can be done in an easy and economically attractive way. Application areas widely vary from healthcare, industry 4.0, automotive, aerospace, consumer goods and many more. In this presentation the possibilities with printed electronics and the use of functional inks will be further illustrated by a few of the many applications already on the market today.
Integration of multiple photonics functions on Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) brings significant reduction in size, weight and costs compared to bulk optics and discrete implementations, as such enabling innovative disruptive applications in many markets, including healthcare. The presentation will give an overview of the applications where a PIC-based sensing solution is expected to deliver most value and will zoom in on some of the most promising opportunities addressed within PhotonDelta such as a.o. low-cost OCT devices for Point-of-care, low-cost and rapid biomarker analysis for application in Life Science research and Point-of-care Diagnostics, Fiber-Optics-Sensing enabled applications for improved in-vivo diagnostics and treatment.
Remote home monitoring via wearables is rapidly gaining popularity, thanks to ever more complex vital signs recording and data analytics that are embedded into single devices. True system-on-chips (SoCs) push the envelope of power and form factor. While wearables are becoming more common-place, novel health sensing paradigms appear. Non-contact sensing technologies enable vital signs sensing without requiring any physical contact to the human body, while ingestible sensing technology could potentially provide a holistic view of the human GI system and metabolic health. This talk will focus on technological innovations needed in this space.
Piezo (PVDF polymer) film is a lightweight and flexible transducer material that offers very high sensitivity to dynamic strain. Since the dynamic range and operating bandwidth of the material are extremely wide, transducers based on piezo film can offer signals uniquely rich in information content. Piezo film sensors can be used to detect body presence and movement, heart and lung sounds, pulse and respiratory rate, instructed and involuntary muscle activity, sleep monitoring, and more – all without consuming power. This talk will illustrate many of these human body contact applications with example signal data.
The talk will highlight recent developments in the field of integrated photonics beyond telecom wavelengths based on hybrid GaSb and silicon PIC platform. Brolis combines gallium antimonide light sources and detectors with a convention Si based PIC platform to create swept-wavelength laser spectrometer-on-a-chip solution for a variety of molecular sensing applications. I will explore different technology layers, their combination and the potential application domain.
Technology advances in image sensors have enabled mobile applications such as advanced photography, biometric authentication and AR. These have driven large smartphone and imaging market growth. Spectral sensing will enable a next wave of mobile applications. Spectricity develops miniaturised spectral imaging solutions, enabling seamless integration into high-volume mobile devices. In this talk, we discuss mobile spectral sensing solutions for accurate personalised health and wellness.
What marks the Onlife era? It’s the shift from intelligent processing ‘at’ the Edge to ‘in’ the Edge, and the promise of a seamless digital-life experience. To integrate Artificial Intelligence in sensors, given the physical processing and storage limitations of 130nm architecture and a power budget in the order of microwatts, ST defined the new Intelligent Sensor Processing Unit (ISPU). It is based on proprietary DSP, is C language programmable, and features 130nm CMOS technology in ultra-low power hardware circuitry for real-time Hybrid Precision AI execution. This reduced instruction-set processor allows quantized AI sensors able to support full precision to single-bit precision neural networks for maximum activity recognition and anomaly detection accuracy from inertial data.
If there has been anything good in the recent crisis, it was for the increased need of holistic manufacturing automation - from material handling over processing to inspection. This presentation provides insights in the relation between new technological advancements in vision, deep learning, cyber security, and cloud analytics for the optimization and flexibilization of manufacturing processes. With such advancements, new opportunities and thus new requests from customers arise calling for holistic end-to-end solutions, from the illumination to the cloud.
Learn how MEMS and Sensor engineers are leveraging Cloud Simulation to develop "Digital Prototypes" of next generation devices. With OnScale Cloud, engineers can explore massive design spaces quickly, converge on new novel designs, and simulate manufacturing and environmental effects on designs. Engineers can also leverage massive simulated datasets to train embedded AI to manage sensor systems.
In this talk, Renovo’s Dennis Hamann will discuss current market innovations on capturing, analyzing and leveraging the data needed to bring ADAS features like self-driving, lane assist, self-parking and more to mainstream vehicles. The current influx of data that OEMs have to sort, rank, analyze, and deploy is extremely large and Dennis Hamann will explain what technologies OEMs are using to speed the innovation and safe deployment of these features.
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While hardware and especially MEMS sensors will remain a crucial part in CE and IoT devices, intelligence provided by smart algorithms within the sensors, that means at the very edge of the system, will gain more and more importance. In his presentation Wolfgang Schmitt-Hahn will introduce specific use case examples and will also give an outlook of the role of software and AI within MEMS sensors for current and new applications.
High-end inertial sensors are widely used in harsh and demanding environments such as industry, commercial aerospace, naval, space and defense applications, where excellent navigation and positioning is needed for critical missions. Due to the growth of all kinds of autonomous systems and for use especially in GPS-denied environments, inertial sensors have been ever so pertinent. Increased military spending from US and also geopolitical tensions in middle east, could drive a slightly higher demand for autonomous aerial, naval and land systems (UAV, UGV, LAV, MAV, ROV, etc) where high-end inertial sensors could benefit. In this presentation, Yole will provide an overview of the market and technologies for high end inertial sensors as well as market and technology trends for accelerometers, gyroscopes and IMU/AHRS/INS (for example photonic FOG, IMU integration in robotic cars, etc).
Fiber optics are replacing traditional sensors in many applications thanks to their noise immunity as well as their size, weight and power (SWaP) advantages that outperform strain gauges and thermocouples. A single fiber optic sensor can deliver data from all along its length compared to the point-specific data collected by conventional sensors. Fiber optics can measure strain, temperature, pressure, vibration and more for applications involving the most extreme conditions such as inside engines, power plants, nuclear reactors, aircraft, or in space, conflict zones and across heavy industries. This Sensuron presentation will describe how engineers are utilizing Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry (OFDR) fiber optic strain measurements to derive distributed shape. OFDR offers the ability to acquire strain measurements continuously along the length of an optical fiber. Coupled with fiber’s flexible routing options, this allows the capture of various data components of strain continuously or quasi-continuously along the length of substrates to which fibers are bonded. Sensuron has successfully applied its technologies in programmes working with NASA, SpaceX, Airbus, Boeing, Virgin Galactic, the Ministry of Defence and Tel Aviv University amongst many.
Mid-infrared photodetectors are playing a vital role in various applications, such as environmental monitoring, space exploration, medical imaging and telecommunication. They are under extensive development to improve their key figure-of-merit parameters. The semiconductor epi-structure is based on mercury cadmium telluride or III–V material whose band gap may be tuned over a wide range for fast and low noise detection of the infrared radiation. In addition, the light-matter interaction characteristics of the 1 – 16 μm spectral range provides unique advantages over other spectral bands, with mid-infrared absorption spectroscopy offering excellent stability, spectral selectivity, response speed and sensitivity. Progress in materials and innovative solutions is driving the technology further. This presentation provides an overview of mid-infrared sensing technologies and opto-electrical devices applied in advanced systems, such as spectrometers for environmental monitoring (not only on Earth), online quality control in drinking water systems, real time engine emissions’ monitoring and precise temperature measurements. It will also demonstrate novel characterization techniques and modern circuit solutions which enhance photodetector devices’ detectivity and operating speed, opening up new application areas.
This presentation will describe recent developments in the area of miniaturisation of Industrial IoT wireless sensing nodes for predictive maintenance and remote monitoring. A review of the components integrated in these autonomous devices will be given, with emphasis on the power elements. The requirement of the energy storage element will be discussed in terms of long life (desire to avoid changing batteries regularly and create truly perpetual solutions), size (need for smaller non-obtrusive devices), energy density (to provide to ever increasing functionality) and operating temperature. A description on how solid state batteries can meet these requirements will be provided.
Dimensions are key for any product in consumer electronics and in particular for sensors this very often translates to smallest form factors. These ever shinking sensor sizes have moved many products towards wafer level manufacturing. The same is true for optical sensors and nanoimprint technology plays and essential role in this development. However, for the nanoimprint lithography it is obvious that it is not only about device dimensions. This technique e very efficient way replicate directly replicate pattern sizes down to the nanometerscale into polymer. This enables to mass manufacture a wide variety of optical components even with most complex design on wafer level.
The road for optical sensors to enter mainstream acceptance has been, for the lack of at better expression, ‘bumpy.’ Solid-state light sources and detectors are thought to behave non-deterministically, which is an engineering nightmare! Despite challenges, we increasingly see ways in which optical sensors now play a vital role in security and other safety-critical applications such as facial recognition, LiDAR, gas sensing and structural monitoring. Broadcom (Formerly Avago Technologies) has for several decades integrated solid-state sensing into the harshest of environments and extreme applications including heavy industry, security, defense, energy generation and many others. We will discuss ways that this expertise benefits ongoing development and integration efforts with highlighted case studies pointing to greater performance enhancements and energy savings made possible with the creative application of optical sensing technologies.
RHbD is the way to go for the development of mixed signal ICs for harsh environments, reducing development cost and time to market. Space applications are the most demanding as TID, Proton and heavy ion bombardments happen simultaneously often combined with (ultra) low-temperature operation. In the talk we will present solutions to overcome TID effects such as H-gate design, donut transistors and DTI. For SEE we will mainly focus on DICE and triple redundancy to avoid SEU and SEFI’s. The effects of these measures will be illustrated using AD converter and memory operation.
Lightricity will present a ultra-high efficient photovoltaic energy harvesting technology that can convert natural and artificial light with over 30% efficiency, even under harsh environments. We will show how this unique technology can provide sufficient electrical power to a wide range of wireless IoT devices and sensors, and how it can be implemented into challenging applications where efficiency, mechanical robustness, and resistance to elevated temperatures (>200C) is paramount. The presentation will also cover specific use cases and on-going projects for network rail monitoring, medical devices and aerospace.
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