Sep 7 2013
The Embedded Vision Alliance today announced that Sony Corporation has joined the Alliance as a Technology Member, bringing the group’s membership to 33 companies.
“Sony is excited to join the Embedded Vision Alliance and work with other technology leaders in the areas of imaging and image processing,” commented Jeff Jones, director of product marketing at Sony. “Embedded vision applications are becoming ubiquitous, and it makes sense for Sony to be part of the group that’s driving the discourse.” The addition of Sony further expands the ranks of companies that have united in an industry partnership dedicated to inspiring and empowering engineers to design systems that see and understand.
The Alliance also announced more details of the Embedded Vision Summit East 2013 (http://www.Embedded-Vision.com/summit/oct2013/overview), an event for system, software, and chip design engineers. Embedded Vision Summit East 2013 will be held October 2, 2013, at the Westford Regency Inn and Conference Center in Westford, Massachusetts. The Summit is a full day of "how-to" presentations and demonstrations of technology and products in one of the hottest areas of technological innovation today: embedded vision, which enables “machines that see and understand.” The Summit keynote will be delivered by Mario Munich, vice president of advanced development at iRobot. Munich was formerly the CTO of Evolution Robotics, where he developed novel human-machine interfaces using video technology and computer vision techniques to develop object recognition, mapping and navigation algorithms for consumer robotics. There will also be a special presentation by Mike Geertsen, program manager of the Visual Media Reasoning program at DARPA. Geertsen will preview open-source tools coming out of the Visual Media Reasoning program. These tools will be available in late 2013 or early 2014.
“The Embedded Vision Summit East 2013 builds on the success of last year’s event,” said Jeff Bier, President of BDTI and founder of the Embedded Vision Alliance. “This year we will deliver even more information, more practical know-how, and more product ideas to attendees.” Those who attended previous Embedded Vision Summits have been enthusiastic, rating them highly for content and usefulness. Registration for the Summit is $99 and is available online at http://www.Embedded-Vision.com/summit/oct2013/registration.
On the day after the Summit, Thursday, October 3, Embedded Vision Alliance members will conduct two hands-on embedded vision design workshops. In one, from 8:30AM to 1:30PM, Analog Devices, Avnet Electronics Marketing, and BDTI will co-present a workshop on hardware and software for image processing and video analytics, featuring the Avnet/Analog Devices Embedded Vision Starter Kit. This workshop is an excellent starting point for vision application developers interested in exploring a wide range of embedded vision applications. In the other, from 12:00PM to 5:00PM, Xilinx and Avnet Electronics Marketing will present a “Smarter Vision” design workshop featuring the Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC, complemented with Vivado, a robust development environment consisting of IP Integrator and Vivado HLS (High-Level Synthesis), Open CV libraries, SmartCORE™ IP, and video development kits. This workshop introduces embedded vision application development using an OpenCV example to demonstrate how a software implementation of an embedded vision application can be accelerated by building a custom hardware accelerator. Both workshops are co-located with the Embedded Vision Summit. For more information about both workshops, visit http://www.Embedded-Vision.com/summit/oct2013/workshops.
The Embedded Vision Alliance brings together providers of the technology used to create practical computer vision applications. Employing advanced techniques for tasks such as object recognition and motion analysis, computer vision technology is well established in applications such as manufacturing process control and inspection. As key vision components such as processors and sensors become more capable and less expensive, these same techniques can increasingly be incorporated in a wide variety of electronic products. Vision capabilities enable electronic products to be more intelligent and responsive, making them more valuable to users. These capabilities also enable electronic equipment companies to create valuable new products and add helpful features to those that already exist. As a result, embedded vision is now proliferating into products ranging from consumer electronics to automotive safety systems, and from retail digital signage to personal medical devices.
With Sony, Embedded Vision Alliance member companies now number 33, and include AMD, Analog Devices, Apical, Aptina, Avnet Electronics Marketing, BDTI, Bluetechnix, Cadence, CEVA, CogniMem Technologies, CogniVue, Digital Media Professionals, eyeSight Mobile Technologies, Fidus Systems, Firefly DSP, Freescale, Geo Semiconductor, IMS Research, LSI, MathWorks, Maxim Integrated Products, NVIDIA, National Instruments, PathPartner Technology, Qualcomm, SoftKinetic, Synopsys, Texas Instruments, Tokyo Electron Device, VanGogh Imaging, videantis, and Xilinx.
The Alliance was founded in May 2011 and is led by BDTI (www.BDTI.com). It is a membership-based collaboration dedicated to inspiring and empowering product developers to incorporate embedded vision technology into their products. A key means of achieving this is providing design engineers with the practical information they need to effectively use embedded vision technology. The Alliance’s first step was the launch of its website at www.Embedded-Vision.com. The site serves as a source of practical information to help design engineers and application developers incorporate vision capabilities into their products. Access to resources on the site, provided by Alliance staff and member companies, is free to all. Information for prospective member companies is available on the site as well.
The Alliance also publishes a free monthly newsletter, Embedded Vision Insights, at www.EmbeddedVisionInsights.com.