Signify announced an innovative creation of virtual reality (VR) development for its customers. With the new lighting VR apps, Philips Fashion Lighting VR and Philips Urban VR, users can immerse themselves in the virtual world to visualize how lighting can transform their fashion store or city street.

The on-going development of LED research and bioelectronics medicine has sparked off a new solution for curing bladder problems. A team consisting of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine, the University of Illinois and Northwestern University has created an implantable device with biointegrated LEDs that can detect and tamp overactivity in the bladder. The research team of neuroscientists and engineers introduced a miniaturized bio-optoelectronic device that is soft and stretchy and implanted it around the bladder of the lab rats. The device expands ...

Signify reported that two French vegetable growers have installed its LED horticulture lighting for their greenhouses to grow cucumbers year-round. Jardins Réunis and Cheminant have both installed Philips GreenPower LED toplighting and Philips GreenPower LED interlighting in their new cucumber greenhouses in the Nantes region of France. The growers are the first to grow high-wire cucumbers with LED lighting in the country, showing their leadership as members of the Océane grower cooperative. (Image: Signify) Signify noted that LED light...

OPTEC International, a green technologies provider, announced that it has signed the exclusive North American distribution rights agreement for the "Pro-Sun" LED Horticultural Grow Lamps in a timely procedure as the U.S. Congress signs the Multi-Billion Dollar "Farm Bill". In December 2018, the U.S. Congress passed the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, so called “Farm Bill,” which legalized marijuana growth in the U.S. As LED lighting is wide used in the cultivation of cannabis LED, LED grow light demands is ...

Chinese LED maker Sanan Optoelectronics announced that the company has supplied Mini and Micro LED chips to several panel manufacturers in the products unveiled at CES 2019. Sanan noted that its LED chips have been adopted in TVs, digital displays, smartphones, smart watches, AR/VR glasses, and gaming notebooks. Mini LEDs, with its compact unit size between 100 to 200 micrometers, allow for high density backlight designs with local dimming capabilities. Sanan has begun large-scale production of RGB Mini LEDs and offers a family of RGB display and bac...

Hyundai MOBIS is showcasing the latest Communication Lighting concept at CES 2019. Communication Lighting uses an "Indicating Lighting Zone" to indicate when an autonomous vehicle is operating in self-driving mode. The concept also includes a "Communication Lighting Zone" that uses LED, digital boards, headlamp projection and sound to communicate with nearby pedestrians and vehicles during various driving scenarios. According to Hyundai MOBIS, autonomous vehicles outfitted with Communication Lighting can detect a pedestrian from more tha...

Autonomous driving is one of the featured technologies at CES 2019. Automobile manufacturers, LiDAR developers as well as sensing components providers have all prepared to join the high profile event with their cutting-edge technologies. LEDinside has selected some noticeable exhibitors who are showcasing the next generation technology for autonomous driving applications. Velodyne Lidar Velodyne continues to present new products for CES 2019. Last week the company released that it will demonstrate Velodyne Alpha Puck™ and Velodyne Velarray™, sensors ma...

Razer, the gaming peripherals provider which is famous for its LED-encrusted keyboard, has step into the automotive business with its Chroma lighting integrated in cars through the partnership with Leap Motor, a Chinese electric car startup. On January 3rd, Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan announced on his Instagram that the company has teamed up with Leap Motor for adopting its Chroma lighting to automotive applications. He said, “Razer Chroma is the world's largest RGB platform and I'm excited to announce that Leapmotor, the hot electric car startup fro...

LEDinside illustrated the global car sales situation in 2018 and explained how the US-China trade war has impacted the automobile market and indirectly influenced the automotive LED market in the past year. In the second part of the analysis, we will further discuss the application trends of automotive LED as well as the global industrial chain of automotive LED. Mainstream automotive LED application trends The automotive LEDs are adopted in various places in cars including interior and exterior lighting, dashboards and rear view mirrors. Headlights as the m...

As a niche application with high profit, automotive LED lighting has been under the spotlight of many LED manufacturers. With 2019 starting, LEDinside would like to share some insights of the market trend on automotive LED. Global vehicle sales slows down due to the US-China disputes In the first half of 2018, car sales had slowly grown as the global economy was relatively stable. However, as the extra tariffs imposed by the Trump government came to effect in July, the on-going US-China dispute has created uncertainty in the global market and affected the sales...

Technology has realized many stories we learnt from sci-fi fictions and movies. A new technology like the “dermal regenerator” in Star Trek that heals wound with laser was developed by a research team from Arizona State University. Kaushal Rege, professor of Chemical Engineering at Arizona State University, and his team members has published a paper on Advanced Functional Materials which describes how they successfully repaired animal wounds with laser-activated silk and gold nanomaterials. The researchers embedded gold nanorods in a silk protein matrix as...

People around the world are getting ready to celebrate the coming New Year. In Taipei, Taiwan, the iconic Taipei 101 building has been a popular celebrating spot for locals and international visitors. This year, an animated LED light show will shine with the annual Taipei 101 New year's Eve fireworks. The light show will be displaying Taiwan’s attractions with nine themes, including geographical landscape and culture diversity, according to Taipei Financial Center Corp, the organizer and the skyscraper manager. (Image: Taipei 101) The LED light sh...

The Christmas tree set up in Rockefeller Center in New York City is one of the most iconic holiday symbols for all. Each year in mid-November, a tree, usually a Norway spruce, would be erected on the Plaza following a public lighting ceremony in late November. The 2018 Christmas tree was lit up by more than 50,000 LED lights on November 28th and will keep shining until January 7th. This year, the 22 meters (72 feet) high tree was crowned with a new Swarovski Star which has 3 million crystals and 70 glass spikes. The LED backlights provide the star with a brightne...

Horticulture lighting applications have become a critical market for the LED industry. LED lighting enables researchers and growers to break the limitation of conventional farming regarding the weather and space. With the help of LED lighting, innovative horticultural researches and activities were reported from all around the world. Various cultivation methods were developed to grow crops in places that we would not consider possible in the past. With the end of the year approaching, let’s look back at how scientists and industry innovators have used LED lighting to...

Apple was grated with several patents relating to smart fabric in the past week. One of them is a glove with integrated circuity and forces sensors that could connect to Apple device for monitoring blood pressure, respiration and heart rate, reported Patently Apple. (Image: The US Patent and Trademark Office) According to the patent, Apple embeds force sensing circuity into fabrics that could sense pressure and force on the fingers and/or palm area of the glove. The glove can transmit the information collected from the circuitry to other devices for further processing an...

Bowery Farming, an indoor autonomous farming startup from New York, has raised US$ 90 million in Series B funding from investors including GV (formerly Google Ventures). and CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi. The company began operating in February 2017 and has opened two vertical farming facilities near New York since then. Bowery Farming applies technologies including robotics, machine learning and predictive analytics to autonomously operate the growing conditions for the crops. Vegetables are grown with controlled environment with optimized LED lighting spectr...

Having looked back at the industry updates of Micro LED technology, let’s keep on reviewing the technology breakthroughs of Micro LED in the past year. KAIST Team Develops Flexible Vertical Micro LED to Cure Hair loss Problem In January, a researcher team at KAIST announced the development of flexible vertical micro LEDs (f-VLEDs). These f-VLEDs achieved optical power density (30 mW/mm2) three times higher than that of lateral Micro LEDs and can be applied to optogenetics for controlling the behavior of neuron cells and brains with...

For the LED and panel industry, the year of 2018 had a dramatic start with Samsung’s revealing of its Micro LED TV “The Wall” at the CES show. Since then, players in the industry have been releasing their achievements related to the next generation display technology. Several innovative solutions and applications have been disclosed in the past year including large size displays and wearable devices. As LEDinside has continued to track the progress of Micro LED development, we would like to list the significant breakthroughs and industry updates...

Taiwan-based optical disc maker RITEK announced that its subsidiary, RiTdisplay and Luminit, a light sharping diffuser supplier in the U.S., are going to set up a joint venture in Taiwan focusing on automotive lighting. The RITEK group began its business in optical disc production and has expanded its operation to storage media, nano-technology, OLED displays and others. RiTdisplay is the subsidiary of RITEK which focuses on OLED development and production. On the other hand, Luminit specializes in light sharping technology for lighting, display, automot...

Osram announced that it is providing several of its components for automotive lighting and biometric identification solutions for microSNAP, Rinspeed’s concept vehicle, which will be presented at CES 2019. Rinspeed’s microSNAP is the latest version of the company’s autonomous concept car which has a chassis to contain the drivetrain and most of the IT while connecting to various body types. (Image: Osram) Outside the vehicle, microSNAP uses Osram’s Eviyos, a hybrid LED for smart headlights, which contains individually controlled pi...

Plessey, the UK-based optoelectronic technology solutions provider, announced that it is going to demonstrate AR and VR glasses powered by Micro LEDs at CES 2019. Plessey’s Micro LEDs are put in action for AR applications with Vuzix, who has collaborated with Plessy in the development of Micro LED smart glasses. According to Plessey, its Micro LEDs offer 10 times the resolution, 100 times the contrast ratio, and up to 1,000 times the luminance compared to traditional OLEDs. Furthermore, the device uses only half the power consumption, doubling b...

The “Micro LED Technology Research Contest” held by LEDinside has received numerous articles providing innovative and practical solutions to enhance the manufacturing of Micro LED during June 6th – September 10th, 2018. LEDinside was very excited to learn all these novel ideas and technologies offered by different institutes and companies from all over the world. Selecting the winning articles was a tough task as most of them have proposed unique perspectives on how to solve the mass transfer issue of Micro LED or improve their yield rate. 

The City of Montreal announced that it has reached the benchmark of 50,000 streetlights converted to LED, as part of its urban lighting modernization program. This project was set to replace 132,500 existing streetlights to LED models and install smart lighting management system simultaneously. As the biggest streetlight conversion project in North America, the project represents a total investment of CAD 110 million (US$ 82.39 million) in five year and is part of Montréal’s overall development as a city of innovation. (image: Montreal City) The st...

Chinese e-commerce company JD.com, has opened a plant factory adopting hydroponic technology provided by Mitsubishi Chemical to supply fresh food for its online and offline customers. Through the strategic collaboration with Mitsubishi Chemical, JD.com plans to increase its capability of food production in order to control and monitor the quality of its food products. The company aims to set up to 10 plant factories in China. The newly built facility locates in the Tongzhou District of Beijing and is expected to produce 300 tons of vegetable annually with its 11,040 square...

LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) has been one of the technology focuses in the past two years as it is a key technology for automotive vehicles and many other applications. According to “2018 Infrared Sensing Application Market Report” by LEDinside, the market value of LiDAR laser is expected to reach US$ 154 million in 2020. Worldwide LiDAR sensor producers and semiconductor firms have been pushing LiDAR development and extending applications through collaboration with other technology partners. Apart from self-driving technology, LiDAR ...

WitsView, a division of TrendForce, released the latest report for gaming monitors (with a frame rate above 100Hz), noting that the shipments of gaming monitors would reach 5.1 million units in 2018 with an annual growth of 100 percent. The gaming market has been expanding in recent years with promotions such as gaming sport, bringing growing momentum to the PC industry and boosting the demands for high quality monitors. Many LCD monitor makers have entered the gaming monitor market which has high gross margins. In the global shipment ranking of gaming monitor makers, AS...

Horticulture LED lighting has opened a new horizon for farming. Indoor farming, vertical farming and many other alternative ways to grow crops free the weather limits for food production. Now, British scholars at University of Nottingham suggested that abandoned underground coal mines could be suitable environments for growing vegetables. With hydroponic systems and LED lighting, crops can be grown in subterranean environments some advantages. For example, groundwater could be directly used in the hydroponic systems. Besides, crop production is unaffected by climatic or sea...

Signify has been announced as the connected lighting partner to illuminate up to 15 of London’s iconic bridges by 2022. In July, the City of London Corporation has passed a project, named “Illuminated River,” to incorporate the 15 bridges on the River Thames for setting up lighting installation. Signify won the contract to supply its Interact Landmark system and Philips Color Kinetics LED luminaires to light up the bridges with dynamic, artistic lighting effects via its centrally managed software. In addition, Signify will provide lifecycle services...

ThorDrive, an autonomous vehicle (AV) startup, has utilized LiDAR sensors of Velodyne to realize its commercial vehicle services. On November 29th, ThorDrive is introducing the service with a kick-off event in Palo Alto with attendants including local government and business leaders. The initial service, in partnership with Hassett ACE Hardware, will support select residents of Channing House (senior housing) and fire departments in Palo Alto with plans to expand to additional pilots soon. The ThorDrive platform is using Velodyne’s lidar sensors to provi...

Combining LED technology and medical research, several integrations have been revealed, showing the potential of the technology in healthcare applications and development. LEDinside has collected some innovative examples of LED applications which create possibilities for future medical improvement. Elastic Micro LED skin sensor system In February 2018, a new ultrathin, elastic Micro LED display that fits snugly on the skin was developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo and Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) in an academic-industrial collaboration. The int...