Partnerships Aim to Produce Smartphone 3-D Cameras

Two business partnerships are setting out on separate missions to develop compact 3-D cameras for mobile devices and, potentially, machine vision applications.

Pelican Imaging of Santa Clara, Calif., and Jabil Circuit Inc. of St. Petersburg, Fla., are collaborating to produce a camera module based on Pelican’s array camera architecture. AAC Technologies of Shenzen, China, will provide the camera lenses, to be produced using advanced wafer-level optics.

Less than 4 mm thick, the device would allow users to perform 3-D scanning and apply image modifications such as refocus, multiple focus, distance measurement and background subtraction or replacement.

OmniVision Technologies Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., will pair its OV7251 global shutter and quad HD OV4688 image sensors, both of which are built on 2-µm OmniPixel3-GS pixels, with the NU3000 application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) from Inuitive Ltd. of Ra’anana, Israel. Functions will include depth sensing, 3-D object reconstruction, gesture detection and head tracking.

OmniVision’s sensors are capable of recording 4-MP images and video at up to 90 fps, and support a high dynamic range of up to 100 dB.

For more information, visit www.ovt.com and www.pelicanimaging.com.