These sensors can freeze movement with their unique electronic shutter design. All the pixels are simultaneously exposed at the same time and length. This ability ensures uniform illumination across the image, even at very short exposure times. Sony has taken this technology one step further with its Pregius® family of sensors that offer some unique operating characteristics, performance, functions, and features that rival other sensor manufacturers.

With their simplified pixel architecture, rolling shutter sensors are cost effective alternatives for applications that are price sensitive. With great features, and on-board processing, they fit optimally into many applications. Sony’s Starvis family of products offer the best-in-class low light performance which enable them to “see in the dark”. These imagers come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and grades that are tailored to almost any application.

There has always been a need to measure wavelengths outside of the visible spectrum. Many applications have leveraged Short Wave Infrared (SWIR) images because they produced intriguing and useful results. The main challenge with these sensors is that they often need to be paired with a sensor that sees images in the visible range. Both sensors need to be optically aligned so that they view the same image while aligning their capture times to get the best image results from both cameras. New technologies have made it possible to capture both visible and SWIR images with the same sensor, thereby addressing this issue.

Event-based imaging is different than conventional image captures. Rather than sending a constant and invariable flow of data from frame-to-frame, only those pixels whose values have changed are sent. This sensor configuration dramatically and efficiently reduces the volume of transmitted data and minimizes the overall required bandwidth. An additional benefit is that the sensor captures this net data at higher speeds, so that a pixel’s rate of change can also be captured and measured more quickly. When both these factors are combined with the right software, new information can be retrieved from the image data that would not have been possible with standard image captures. This process emulates how the human eye detects scenes and events.

There are many ways that sensors are used to extract and measure depth information. One method that is gaining popularity for its simplicity of design is the Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor technology. This technology uses the constant speed of light to determine distances. A ToF sensor emits light externally and then captures its reflection off nearby objects. The travel time of light, from the sensor to the reflected surface of an obstruction and back, is measured to determine an object’s distance. By repeating these actions across the field of view, the camera is able to create a depth map of what is in front it.