3D smart camera being designed by CEVA and LG Electronics
Signal processing IP company CEVA and consumer electronics and appliances company LG Electronics have announced a partnership to develop a low-cost 3Dsmart camera for consumer electronics and roboticapplications.
The 3D camera will feature a Rockchip RK1608 coprocessor with multiple CEVA-XM4 imaging and vision DSPs, which according to CEVA, provide the processing power to perform a wide variety of 3D sensing applications. These include biometric face authentication, 3D reconstruction, gesture/posture tracking, obstacle detection, augmented reality, and virtual reality. Computer vision experts from CEVA, Rockchip, and LG have collaborated to optimize LG's proprietary algorithms for the CEVA-XM4 using CEVA's tool kit and optimized algorithm libraries ensuring optimal performance under stringent power constraints, according to the press release.
"There is a clear demand for cost-efficient 3D camera sensor modules to enable an enriched user experience for smartphones, AR and VR devices and to provide a robust localization and mapping (SLAM) solution for robots and autonomous cars," said Shin Yun-sup, principal engineer at LG Electronics. "Through our collaboration with CEVA, we are addressing this demand with a fully-featured compact 3D module, offering exceptional performance thanks to our in-house algorithms and the CEVA-XM4 imaging and vision DSP."
lan Yona, vice president and general manager of the Vision Business Unit at CEVA, also commented: "We're delighted to announce our collaboration with LG for the 3D camera module market. Our CEVA-XM family of imaging and vision DSPs and software development environment allows companies like LG to deploy their in-house developed computer vision and deep learning technologies quickly and efficiently."
The 3D smart camera will make its debut at the CEVA Technology Symposium Series in China and Taiwan, October 23-27.
CEVA and LG Electronics indicate that the camera is being designed specifically for consumer electronics and robotic applications, unlike the Microsoft Kinect—and later iterations—which was designed specifically for gaming. This, however, did not prevent users from deploying the 3D Kinect camera into applications far beyond the realm of gaming, such as research, medical applications,automation,robotics, and more.An inexpensive 3D smart camera would likely have numerous applications that it could be successfully deployed into, should the right people get their hands on it when its available.
View the CEVA press release.
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James Carroll
Former VSD Editor James Carroll joined the team 2013. Carroll covered machine vision and imaging from numerous angles, including application stories, industry news, market updates, and new products. In addition to writing and editing articles, Carroll managed the Innovators Awards program and webcasts.