Vertical farming breaks the limitation of growing crops and creates possibilities for food production everywhere. Supporting by LED tunable lighting and hydroponics system, vertical farms leverage their strengths to shrink the distance between growers and consumers, attracting strategic partners to launch innovative services. Singapore Airline, for example, collaborated AeroFarms, a U.S.-based vertical farm startup, for realize the Airline’s “From Farm to Plane” concept. AeroFarms has begun to supply fresh produce for Singapore Airline’s flight s...

Hitachi Vantara, the Silicon Valley-based digital infrastructure and solutions subsidiary of Hitachi, announced the application of an artificial intelligence (AI) based solution for airlines and airports to solve the challenges of crowd during the busy holiday season. The company’s technology aims to eliminate travel delays caused by congestion at check-in, security, retail and aircraft boarding areas. Hitachi Vantara has developed solutions that combine computer vision with video analytics using LiDAR and machine learning to help airline and airport staff identify whe...

Smart wearables including watches, glasses, headphones and others are considered rising stars in the consumer market with more and more big names launching products combining different functions for medical use, health care, entertainment and more. According to Trendforce, the global shipments of smart watches in 2019 are estimated to reach 62.63 million units. The requirements of wearable products include small size, light weight, low power consumption and environmental resistance. The progressing Micro LED technologies thus become critical for the development of smart wearables...

Since the initial production began in the second half of 2018, Mini LED products including backlit panel and RGB displays are gaining more and more visibility in the industry with a wide range of applications launched in 2019 and the coming 2020. The LED industry players in Taiwan and China see the rising market of Mini LED and are putting their strength into product development and capacity increase. Epistar, as a Mini LED pioneer, has already shipped backlight product for high-end monitors, notebooks, automotive displays and smartphones. The company is going t...

Apple’s autonomous vehicle development, also known as “Project Titan,” seems to go on progressing with more and more related patents published. Patently Apple and appleinsider both covered that the company has won new patents of automotive applications. One of the new Apple patents is titled “Systems with Synchronized Windows,” describing a LCD integrated car window with adjustable transparency which enhance privacy. Apple noted in the patent that the vehicle window would include a light modulator layer such as a liquid crystal layer with polari...

In order to push the development of autonomous driving technology, worldwide LiDAR developers continue to release new products and build partnerships with different industry players. Apart from the mechanical LiDAR suppliers and US-based solid-state LiDAR makers, LEDinside also tracks the progresses of solid-state LiDAR makers around the world and the following is their update in the past year. Related reading:  Global LiDAR Companies 2019 Progresses: Solid-State LiDAR Manufacturers in the U.S. Global LiDAR Companies and Their Lates...

UV-C LED water disinfection solution provider AquiSense Technologies announced its partnership with SUEZ to provide the UV-C LED Water Treatment Technology for water disinfection directly at the point of use in critical laboratory applications. AquiSense and SUEZ have been engaged in close co-operation for over a year in a detailed joint development effort to deliver a laboratory water purification unit equipped with advanced UV-C LED technology. The new laboratory product offers a high-level microbial disinfection barrier directly at the point of use. T...

Signify announced that it installed Interact Industry in the newly developed warehouse facility of Pilkington Automotive in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, marking its entrance into the Industrial IoT space. This cloud-based, wireless connected lighting system is specifically designed for warehouses and manufacturing facilities. Pilkington Automotive, part of NSG Group, is one of the world’s largest suppliers of automotive glass. Its new European central warehouse meets the latest storage systems and warehouse design standards and is fully aligned with the company’s...

Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (KOSDAQ 046890), a leading global innovator of LED products and technology, announced that it will auction its radio frequency (RF) semiconductor patent portfolio and its high power LED package patent portfolio. In the first auction, Seoul Semiconductor is seeking the top bidder for 98 patent assets related to power amplifiers and gallium nitride (GaN) RF semiconductors, including 55 U.S. patents. Three of the patents are licensed to the U.S. Air Force or the U.S. Army, confirming the value of the portfolio. This RF pate...

Increasing studies have indicated the effects of lighting on human well-being. Lighting design in healthcare facilities thus become even more critical to enhance patents’ condition and provide staffs suitable working environment. Based on the understanding and its expertise in lighting, Osram indicated that lighting design techniques play an influential role in the overall patient experience and healing process. The company thus introduced five trends in lighting design for healthcare facilities. (Image: Osram) Flexibility a Must Flexibility is identify as an indisp...

Signify announced the upgrade of its European specification portfolio of luminaires for office applications from CRI 80 to CRI 90 as standard. This step-up in Color Rendering Index will more accurately render object colors – displaying them even more precisely – compared to the standard CRI 80 products. Signify is the first lighting company to make the change to CRI 90 with a red color rendering index (R9 of 50 or higher) across the board of its office project luminaires in Europe. (Image: Signify) With office lighting design high on many organizatio...

Automotive lighting and electronics provider Hella announced a new lighting system with high resolution, Digital Light SSL | HD. With the new lighting technology, more than 30,000 pixels can be controlled intelligently and individually, enabling numerous new safety functions like optical lane markings. According to Hella, "Digital Light SSL | HD" is a consistent further development and miniaturization of existing matrix LED systems. Together with an enlarged light-emitting surface, the s higher number of pixels is the basis for a multitude of new functiona...

Many consider solid-state LiDARs the solution to realize autonomous driving technology as they are much cheaper and lighter compared to mechanical LiDARs. In 2019, many solid-state LiDAR providers have reported their technology developments and market expansion. Let’s take a look of the latest updates in solid-state LiDARs. Related reading: Global LiDAR Companies and Their Latest Progresses in 2019: Mechanical LiDAR Suppliers Quanergy Expands Business in Asia and South America Solid-state LiDAR company Quanergy has been proact...

Adjustable LEDs that deliver light source similar to natural sun light not only help to improve human wellbeing but also enable sustainable fishing. Lighting supplier Signify announced that it is providing underwater LED lighting for the marine-based fish farms of Australis Seafoods in Chile. Australis chose Signify because of its commitment to a sustainable world, strongly supporting Australis’ objectives for responsible and efficient fish farming. (Image: Signify) Signify’s underwater lights that reach up to 100,000 lumen, mimicking the summer sun, conve...

Driven by the prospering development of autonomous driving technology, LiDAR companies across the world continue to expand their business and present new products. Many LiDAR builders reported their updates in both technology and business progresses in 2019. Following these news, LEDinside would like to share with our readers updates of the LiDAR industry in the past year. (Image: Ouster/NVIDIA) Velodyne Lidar Partners Hyundai Mobis for ADAS and Supports Varied Applications In 2019, the mechanical LiDAR expert has introduced several new ...

Signify introduced an innovative way to product lighting products: 3D print them! The company unveiled its facilities to 3D print light shades and fittings (luminaires) in the Netherlands and announced its plan to establish more 3D printing factories in the US, India and Indonesia. (Supermarket using 3D printed luminaires; image: Signify) By 3D printing luminaires, Signify uses a 100% recyclable polycarbonate material, allowing lighting products to be bespoke designed or tailored to customer’s exact needs and recycled at the end of their life, supporting a circula...

Silvair is providing Bluetooth mesh solutions for Osram’s lighting control system through its new new partnership. Osram’s HubSense® is designed to enable easy and time-efficient retrofitting of existing lighting installations into flexible wireless control systems based on the globally interoperable Bluetooth mesh standard. The system also allows quick and effortless modification of settings and lighting arrangement without bearing the costs of recommissioning. (Image: Silvair/Osram) With Silvair as its Technology Partner, OSRAM gains access to th...

Signify has been proactively expanding its LiFi services via cooperation with partners in different fields to provide reliable, secure and fast connectivity everywhere. The company announced a pilot project with Ellamp Spa, an Italian designer and manufacturer of interior systems and components for public and private transport by road and rail, to provide Trulifi systems to buses. The move follows a recent similar announcement with Latécoère to provide Trulifi for passenger aircraft. (Image: Signify) The pilot with Ellamp will improve passenger connectivity...

An enormous LED display was installed in Harvard Business School’s newly opened multipurpose auditorium in the campus. With a pixel pitch of 1.9mm, the curved LED display supplied by SiliconCore is 6 meters high and 18.8 meters wide. The new auditorium in Harvard Business School is named Karman Hall and accommodates up to 1,000 people. The LED display was set in the center, providing viewing distances ranging from 5 to 40 meters. (Image: SiliconCore/Harvard Business School) The digital canvas can connected with devices via HDMI and can be fed ...

In the list of CES 2020 Innovation Award Honoree, several LiDAR products were named including Cube by Blickfeld, Helius Smart Lidar System by Cepton, Leddar Pixell by LeddarTech and RS-LiDAR-M1 by RoboSense. Blickfeld, LeddarTech and RoboSense were listed in the category of “Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation,” while Cepton was named in two categories, “Smart Cities,” and “Tech for a Better World.” Blickfeld Cube is a solid-state LiDAR targeting the mass market, according to Blickfeld, the Germ...

STMicroelectronics (ST) announced its collaborative efforts with Audi to conceive, design, industrialize, manufacture, and deliver the next generation of innovative automotive exterior OLED lighting. The first demonstration of this effort was the showing of next-generation digital OLED technology presented by Audi at the 2019 International Symposium on Automotive Lighting (ISAL). The parties target to release this new technology in future Audi car models. (Image: ST/Audi) The current cooperation expands the relationship and builds on Audi’s creativ...

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Taiwan's largest and leading high-tech applied research institutions, won two CES 2020 Innovation Awards, including its PECOLA (Personal Companion for Older People Living Alone) in the Smart Home category and iStimUweaR in Wearable Technologies. ITRI President Edwin Liu pointed out that ITRI’s PECOLA robot is able to identify and analyze living conditions for seniors, and employs a video-based fall detection technology, which will send notification for assistance when a person take...

CEO of Signify spoke on this year’s Climate Week in New York calling for action against climate change and underlined that switching conventional lighting into connected LEDs is part of the solutions. Making the change towards energy-efficient lighting can have major positive effects for cities. For example, in 2017 Poland implemented its first large-scale lighting management system and made the switch to connected LED lighting. 2,000 LED luminaires were installed in two Polish cities, Kalisz and Ostrów Wielkopolski, with Interact City lighting asset...

The European Union have set up higher standards of food safety and food quality. In order to meet the requirements especially in the dairy industry, researchers in the EU are working on developing a new optoplasmonic sensor which enable fast, on-site milk quality analysis. In the EU-funded project MOLOKO (Multiplex phOtonic sensor for pLasmonic-based Online detection of contaminants in milK), Fraunhofer researchers have teamed up with partners from seven countries to develop a fast and inexpensive test for identifying quality factors in milk. In the five-minute te...

Seoul Semiconductor announced that its SunLike Series natural spectrum LEDs have been adopted for lighting brand “REMEZ” by RemiLicht GmbH for the lighting market in Russia. The LED light bulbs feature a human-centric lighting design enabled by the SunLike Series LEDs. The SunLike Series LEDs adopted by RemiLicht GmbH for LED light bulb used for residential lighting and desk lamp achieved color temperatures of warm white (3000K) and cold white (5700K), optimized to natural light spectra by reaching lower blue light peak similar to su...

Environmental Groups in the U.S. filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for challenging the recent rollback of energy-saving light bulb standard. In September 2019, the Trump’s administration withdrew the Obama’s decision in 2017 which added additional light bulb types to the lighting efficiency standard. By doing so, it is analyzed by American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) that the U.S. consumer will spend US$ 15 billion on electricity annually and the environmental impact will be intensified with more carbo...

UV LED technology has come closer to our daily life for diminishing bacteria and enhancing hygiene. One way to apply the technology could be integrating UV LEDs with public door handles. Two graduate students of the Chinese University in Hong Kong designed the self-sanitizing door handle and was selected as the top 20 in the James Dyson Award in 2019. Sum Ming Wong and Kin Pong Li, the inventors of the self-sanitizing door handle, were inspired by the SARS outbreak in 2003 when the infection spread out via contact. The door handle was created to prevent conta...

LED lighting combining hydroponics system enables people to cultivate food anytime anywhere. In France, a startup company has turned an underground garage in Paris into a vertical farm to grow mushroom and greens, providing fresh food for local people. The government built several parking spaces under the city of Paris during 1960’s to 1970’s and these spaces become abandoned as the driving population declined. La Caverne, a French startup, thus decided to grow vegetables via urban agriculture project in a garage under the city. (Image: La Caverne) Fou...

Getac, a rugged tablet and PC manufacturer announced its partnership with pureLiFi for integrating LiFi technology into ruggedized wireless devices. For military, automotive, and manufacturing customers, security, safety and reliability are paramount to their operations. As LiFi enables data transmission via light rather than radio waves, the technology features secure and reliable high speed internet connection, supporting Getac the latest technologies to provide customers with solutions to overcome challenges and safeguard and improve productivity. "Getac's pa...

A Chinese research team recently develop a stretchable light-emitting devices which delivers information and can be attached to human skin and other surfaces. The device is like a temporary tattoo and can be operated at low voltage so it does not cause harm to users. Published in ACS Materials Letter in October 2019, the results from researchers at Nanjing University in China demonstrated stretchable light-emitting devices called alternating-current electroluminescent (ACEL) displays. The device has a sandwiched structure with an electroluminescent layer made of light-em...