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prophesy has partnered with Qualcomm to bring a new kind of fast image sensor to smartphone cameras.
The “event-based” Metavision technology will enable smartphone cameras that can capture fast action compared to current image sensors. The company announced this together with Qualcomm during the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona.
The idea is to bring the speed, efficiency and quality of neuromorphic vision to mobile devices.
The technical and business collaboration provides mobile device developers with a fast and efficient way
to leverage the ability of the Paris-based Prophesee sensor to dramatically improve camera performance, particularly in fast-moving dynamic scenes (e.g. sports scenes) and low-light conditions, through its pioneering event-based continuous and asynchronous pixel detection approach.
Unlike normal image sensors, the event-based sensors designed by Prophesee only capture what changes in a smartphone image. That allows them to skip the processing required by other types of sensors that process every single pixel in an image. Prophesee captures only the changes or events that reflect something changing in a moving image.
Prophesee and Qualcomm have agreed on a multi-year partnership to enable native compatibility between Prophesee’s Event-Based Metavision Sensors & Software and premium Snapdragon mobile platforms.
The world is neither grid nor frame based. Inspired by the human eye, Prophesee Event-Based sensors restore motion blur and other image quality artifacts caused by conventional sensors, especially in highly dynamic scenes and low-light conditions, bringing photography and video closer to our true experiences.
“Prophesee is a clear leader in applying neuromorphic techniques to address the limitations of traditional techniques
cameras and improve the overall user experience. We believe this is groundbreaking technology for
taking mobile photography to the next level and our collaboration on both technical and business fronts
levels will help drive adoption by leading OEMs,” said Judd Heape, vice president of product management at Qualcomm Technologies, in a statement. is in the next generation of mobile devices powered by Snapdragon, even in the most demanding environments, unlocking a range of new possibilities for Snapdragon customers.”
Prophesee’s neuromorphic Event-Based Metavision sensors and software will be available for premium Snapdragon mobile platforms. Development kits are expected to be available from Prophesee this year.
“We are delighted to partner with the provider of one of the world’s most popular mobile platforms
incorporate event-driven vision into the Snapdragon ecosystem. Through this collaboration, product
developers can dramatically improve the user experience with cameras that deliver images
quality and operational excellence are not available with traditional frame-based methods alone,” said Luca
Verre, CEO of Prophesee, in a statement.
How it works
Prophesee’s groundbreaking sensors add a new perception dimension to mobile photography. They change
the paradigm in traditional image capture by focusing only on changes in a scene, pixel by pixel,
continuously, at extreme speeds, the companies said.
Each pixel in the Metavision sensor contains a logic core, allowing it to act as a neuron. They all activate themselves intelligently and asynchronously, depending on the number of photons they perceive. A pixel that activates itself is called an event. Essentially, events are driven by the dynamics of the scene, not a random clock anymore, so the acquisition rate always matches the actual scene dynamics.
High quality event-based blur is achieved by synchronizing a frame-based and Prophesee’s
event-based sensor. The system then fills the gaps between and within frames with microsecond events to algorithmically extract pure motion information and restore motion blur.
A development kit with compatibility with Prophesee sensor technologies is expected
available this year. Prophesee has more than 100 engineers and 50 international patents.
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