Feb 23 2016
Rambus Inc. today announced that it has furthered its innovative lensless smart sensor (LSS) technology to demonstrate thermal sensing capabilities.
By extending the award-winning LSS technology to include thermal sensing capabilities, Rambus is broadening the applicability of the technology, enabling new and enhanced functionality for many Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Target applications that can benefit from the small size and affordability of thermal and visible LSS technology include automotive passenger detection, virtual and augmented reality eye tracking, and smart home presence detection.
“LSS can enable a future where IoT technology is infused into many aspects of modern life, from smart cities and transportation to medical equipment and manufacturing,” said Dr. Gary Bronner, vice president of Rambus Labs. “With the addition of these new capabilities, LSS can replace traditional thermal lenses with optical gratings that are significantly less expensive, making LSS ideal for cost-sensitive IoT applications.”
First unveiled in 2014, the Rambus LSS technology has brought a fundamentally new approach to imaging that shifts the function of traditional optics to computation and eliminates the need for expensive lenses by replacing them with tiny inexpensive diffractive gratings. The gratings, combined with optimized algorithms and off-the-shelf thermal or visible sensors, perform a wide range of functions, such as gesture recognition, eye tracking, object identification and depth sensing. Over the past year, Rambus’ Partners-in-Open-Development (POD) program has allowed for a handful of select design and technology companies to implement and accelerate the development of LSS for new use cases.