Download workshop flyer here

1. 12.9.11: Blog entry about the workshop from Albert Theuwissen at http://harvestimaging.com/blog/?p=815
2. 13.9.11: Blog entry from Vladimir Koifman (who received the 2011 Image Sensors Workshop service award) in Image Sensors World at http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2011/09/swiss-image-and-vision-sensors-review.html

This one-day IEEE workshop brought together Swiss developers and potential partners in the very active Swiss developments in photonic devices, image sensors, and vision sensors. These rapidly evolving devices are used in a host of applications in science and technology. The primary aim of the workshop was to enable discussion of open technical problems and application opportunities.

The presentations covered a broad range of cutting edge technologies ranging over single-photon sensors, 3d time-of-flight sensors, wide-dynamic range sensors, bio-inspired vision sensors, high speed sensors, advanced image processing, and application areas in machine vision. Live demonstrations showed how these work and how they can be applied.

Organizations participating in the workshop included CSEM Photonics, PhotonFocus, Heliotis, Espros Photonics, Seitz Phototechnik, EPFL Lausanne, the University of Zürich, and ETH Zürich.

All presentations were in English.

September 8, 2011, 9:00-18:30

• Room Y35F32, Irchel Campus, University of Zurich.
• Directions and parking

registration to the workshop is now over, because the workshop already took place.

Presentation material available here is copyrighted by the authors and may not be reused without explicit permission from the authors.

9:30-10:00 Registration and coffee

10:00-10:10 Welcome and Introduction, Shih-Chii Liu and Tobi Delbruck, Chair and Secretary of the combined IEEE Swiss Circuits and Systems and Electron Devices Chapter

10:10-10:30 How biological retinas compute many views of the world
Botond Roska, FMI Basel.

10:30-10:50 Opportunities and lessons from building event-based digital silicon retinas
Tobi Delbruck, UZH-ETH Zurich, Inst. of Neuroinformatics, Download presentation. See also siliconretina, Tobi Delbruck's YouTube channel.

10:50-11:10 Low cost and low power vision systems
Pierre-Francois Ruedi, CSEM Neuchatel, Download presentation.

11:10-11:30 leanXcam: Ideas and lessons learned from an open source business model
Johannes Gassner, SCS AG, Download presentation.

11:30-11:50 Single-photon detection: Facts and myths. What should we expect from integrated SPAD imaging?
Claudio Bruschini, TU Delft and EPFL.

12:00-13:00 Lunch break

13:10-13:30 Single-photon integrating CMOS image sensors
Nicolas Blanc, VP Photonics Division, CSEM Zurich, Download presentation.

13:30-13:50 World record sub-electron resolution room temperature CMOS image sensors based on open-loop amplification
Christian Lotto, Heliotis AG and CSEM Photonics Division, Download presentation.

13:50-14:10 High-speed imaging – Historical review, state-of-the-art sensors, and future trends
Thomas Baechler, Section Head Image Sensing, CSEM Zurich, Download presentation.

14:10-14:30 Photosensors for optical 3D imaging
Peter Seitz, CSEM, Download presentation.

14:30-15:00 Coffee break

15:00-15:20 World record high dynamic range imaging: Opportunities and challenges
Peter Schwider, Photofocus AG, Download presentation.

15:20-15:40 Outstanding properties of the Espros CMOS/CCD technology and consequences for image sensors
Enrico Marchesi & Martin Popp, Espros Photonics Corporation, Download presentation.

15:40-16:00 Raw image conversion and processing
Aboubakr Bekkali with Urs Krebs, Seitz Phototechnik AG, Download presentation.

16:00-16:30 Forum discussion: What features are needed for future sensors?

Marc Polleys, director of the ETH Institute for Visual Computing (IVC), said that computer vision still needs sensors with more pixels and higher frame rate, including global shutter. He also said there was a strong trend in computer vision to use cell phone cameras for real time augmented reality. Tobi Delbruck pointed out that even though frame-free cameras were just starting to be available, the computer vision community has a very hard time dealing with them because they are so wedded to the notion of frames as the basic data structure from which all else springs. Sabine Susstrunk from EPFL reacted to this saying there are already too many pixels but of the wrong type to do good vision. Peter Seitz suggested that the future of image sensor evolution lay in the use of organic photodetectors, with better optical properties than vanilla silicon.

16:30-18:00 Live Demonstrations and Apero sponsored by the IEEE Swiss Section

• PhotonFocus High Dynamic Range cameras, PhotonFocus AG
• leanXcam and applications, Supercomputing systems AG
• Time-of-flight optical 3D imaging camera, MESA Imaging
• 3D pointing device, CSEM Neuchatel
• Event-based vision with dynamic vision sensor silicon retinas, inilabs GmbH and Inst. of Neuroinformatics, UZH & ETHZ

Vision Tape - a novel class of flexible vision sensor for robots and humans, Michal Karol Dobrzynski, Geraud L'Eplattenier, Ramon Pericet-Camara and Dario Floreano, Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, Ecole Federale Polytechnique de Lausanne

Download poster

epc6xx - 3D-TOF “Time of Flight” Camera Family, epc - Espros Photonic Corporation.

Download poster

“Improving the visible with the invisible: RBN + Near-infrared” by M. Brown, N. Barbuscia, C. Fredembach, Y.M. Lue, Z. Sadeghipoor, N. Salamati, L. Schaul, D. Tamburrino, and S. Süsstrunk.

Download poster

“The SPADnet FP7 project coordinated by Edoardo (single photon imaging for PET applications, the concepts being transposable to large area, networked imagers - www.spadnet.eu, www.megaframe.eu” and “A summary of single photon imaging activities over the past decade from the Charbon lab”

Download SPADnet poster

Download SPAD activities poster

The workshop was sponsored by the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, the IEEE Swiss chapters of the Circuits and Systems and Electron Devices Societies, the IEEE Switzerland section, and the Inst. of Neuroinformatics at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich.

• For information on registration payment receipts contact Kathrin Aguilar.
• For other information contact Tobi Delbruck or Shih-Chii Liu.

1. Steve Collins made excellent suggestion that future workshops could include a poster/demo preview session of 1 slide preview.
2. A workshop photographer/videographer should be assigned to document the workshop, particularly the setting and demos.
3. Perhaps topic themes could be assigned to specific persons who would prepare an introduction and then make a strong point which would provoke debate from the audience.
4. Beer at apero was popular but not so much the mini bratwurstli.
5. Christoph Maier suggested that a future workshop could be streamed via www.ustream.tv, for example.