Say goodbye to grainy night time pictures and hulking digicam bumps—Eindhoven’s eyeo desires to vary how machines see the world. The imaging startup has raised €15 million in Seed funding to carry its nanophotonic sensor expertise to market.
Their goal is to dramatically enhance picture high quality, decision, and low-light efficiency with out rising digicam dimension.
The spherical was co-led by imec.xpand and Make investments-NL, and in addition included participation from QBIC fund, Excessive-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), and Brabant Improvement Company (BOM). The contemporary capital will gasoline the event of eyeo’s analysis kits, scale-up plans for its first sensor product, and help business partnerships.
Jeroen Hoet, CEO of eyeo: “Eyeo is essentially redefining picture sensing by eliminating decades-old limitations. Capturing all incoming gentle and drastically bettering decision is simply the beginning—this expertise paves the best way for fully new purposes in imaging, from ultra-compact sensors to enhanced low-light efficiency, ultra-high decision, and most picture high quality. We’re not simply bettering present methods; we’re creating a brand new normal for the way forward for imaging.”
Based in 2023, eyeo’s mission is to redefine picture sensing by tackling the light-capturing limitations that, based on them, have constrained digicam expertise for many years.
Conventional sensors depend on purple, inexperienced, and blue filters utilized to pixels, a way that discards as much as 70% of incoming gentle. Eyeo’s innovation lies in nanophotonic colour-splitting expertise, which replaces these filters with vertical waveguides that information gentle on to the suitable pixels.
This reportedly not solely eliminates gentle loss but in addition improves picture decision and constancy.
eyeo claims it may possibly obtain sub-0.5-micron pixels, enabling ultra-compact sensors with top-tier efficiency. These might be particularly helpful in cell units, robotics, and XR gear, the place energy effectivity, dimension, and picture high quality are essential.
Furthermore, by offering full-colour data on to pixels—reasonably than counting on software program interpolation—eyeo’s sensors reportedly ship double the decision and thrice the sensitivity of typical alternate options. The expertise can be appropriate with present CMOS platforms.
In smartphones, producers have been compensating for poor low-light efficiency by merely rising sensor sizes, which ends up in bulkier digicam modules. Eyeo’s strategy, which improves efficiency with out rising sensor dimension, provides an answer significantly engaging to OEMs aiming to maintain units slim and visually interesting.
Past smartphones, its potential extends to computational pictures, machine imaginative and prescient, and spatial computing—industries the place precision and picture readability are crucial.
eyeo plans to launch analysis kits to chose prospects throughout the subsequent two years, utilizing the funding to refine its sensor structure and scale the manufacturing course of.
