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...

Last week the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published 59 patents of Apple including one patent named “Lighting Systems of Vehicle Seats,” which is believed to be part of Apple’s autonomous vehicle project “Project Titan,” according to the report of Patently Apple. Apple’s new patent of vehicle lighting systems noted that the lighting system can be integrated into a seat, door panel, dashboard, or other interior portions of a vehicle. These interior parts of car would be illuminated with the light systems for providing icons, text, a...

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...

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...

Cree reported its strategic partnership with German’s ZF Friedrichshafen for highly efficient electric drivelines development. With this strategic partnership, ZF and Cree are intensifying their existing cooperation. “We're delighted that we're building on our cooperation with Cree using their Wolfspeed silicon carbide technology and are absolutely convinced that combining our strengths will further improve efficiency and competitive edge for our components and systems,” said Jörg Grotendorst, Head of the ZF E-Mobility Division. (Ima...

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...

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...

At the Micro LED product launch, Konka invited Shuiji Nakamura, the Nobel winner in 2014, to share his ideas about Micro LED displays and the technology progress of his laboratory. According to Nakamura, Micro LED outpaces OLED in all the features including brightness, contrast, durability and more, however, the only challenge for Micro LED is production cost. And in order to reduce cost, the miniaturize process of LED might lead to efficiency degrease. Currently the research team has developed a 10μm Micro LED chip which is able to achieve 42% EO...

Konka Group from China hold a product launch event on October 31 and introduced its latest Micro LED display products including a 118-inch 4K TV, a 117-inch 6K TV and a 236-inch 8K TV under the brand name “APHAEA.” Konka called its Micro LED TV product “Smart Wall,” aiming to challenge Samsung’s “The Wall.” The Micro LED displays of Konka are also modular display that can be customized into different shapes and sizes. The Smart Wall TVs use more than 100 million Micro LED chips to reach a brigh...

Apple’s AR glasses have become even more materialized as Bloomberg reported on October 21 that the iPhone maker is likely to introduce AR headset which synchronize the new 5G upgraded iPhone in 2020. According to Bloomberg, the glasses will wirelessly connected with iPhone to show information over users’ field of vision, displaying texts, emails, maps or even games. Apple was also said to include an App Store with the headset. (Image: the United States Patent and Trademark Office) The Apple’s AR glasses are expected to have holographic dis...

A research team of The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed a new light-emitting material which combines quantum dot with a polymer medium filled with popcorn-like air bag. The new material, compared to conventional pure quantum dot films, perform 21 times better luminous intensity and 45% better durability. (Image: KAIST) The study was published online in September on Nano Letters, titles “Order-of-Magnitude, Broadband-Enhanced Light Emission from Quantum Dots Assembled in Multiscale Phase-Separated Block Copol...

As display technology continues to progress, worldwide big names have launched innovative displays that the resolution has evolved from full HD to 4K. Nevertheless, without high contrast, the refined display performance of high resolution would not be fully presented. High contrast intensifies the brightness and darkness of images and videos on TVs and gaming monitors and enables AR wearables or automotive displays to deliver clear picture under sunlight. Thus, the demands for high contrast display keep rising. LEDs, with its self-emitting feature, can be adopted to various ...

Hyundai Mobis announced its partnership with Velodyne Lidar for mass-producing level 3 autonomous driving LiDAR system. Hyundai Mobis will also invest US$50 million in Velodyne to reinforce business cooperation in LiDAR commercialization. (Image: Hyundai Mobis) The two companies will collaborate on new LiDAR system supply by integrating Velodyne’s latest LiDAR sensors with Hyundai Mobis’ cognitive software. Hyundai Mobis’ cognitive software will process the outside vehicle environment data gathered by LiDAR sensors which means tha...

People become more and more aware of how lighting can affect human well-being and are paying attention to the quality of lighting. For enhancing light quality, researchers found out people have different perception of light sources depending on their age and highlighted the importance of taking age factor into consideration when designing white LED lighting. A study published in The Optical Society (OSA) journal Optics Express investigated the perception variability related to short-wavelength effects and confirmed that the perception of white LEDs is affected by the view...

Chemistry company BASF announced that it has signed a distribution agreement with EMDE Development of Light (EMDE), a Germany-based innovative lighting design company. Under the agreement, EMDE will distribute BASF’s innovative LED Sunvue® lighting products in Europe. In addition, the lighting company will adopt BASF’s color conversion technology to design new lighting products and solutions. (Image: BASF) BASF’s proprietary Sunvue technology is developed to optimize blue LED light for different applications. The te...

Google launched its latest smart phones Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL on October 15, featuring advanced camera functions, motion sensing and face unlock. The new features of Pixel 4 are supported by sensing technology specialists including Infineon and ams. (Image: Google) Google created Motion Sense to detect users hand motions based on its technology from Project Soli. The technology allows user operate the device simply by swiping or waving hands in front of it Instead of touching or holding the phone. This function was achieved thanks to Infineon’s radar chip. T...

ON Semiconductor and AImotive have jointly announced that they will work together to develop prototype sensor fusion platforms for automotive applications. The collaboration will help customers explore highly integrated solutions for future generations of sensor data conditioning hardware platforms. The companies plan to develop a series of hardware platform demonstrators, combining ON Semiconductor’s latest HD camera and radar sensor and pre-processor chipsets and expertise with AImotive’s AI-based perception algorithms, hardware acceleration and simulation ca...

Specialized in facial recognition, the U.S.-based company StereoVision Imaging (SVI) announced that it won eight patents related to Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) LiDAR technology. Conventional FMCW LiDAR systems are typically limited in various aspects of operation. For example, these conventional systems are not able to provide range and/or range rate information instantaneously based on the target signal or unambiguously determine distance and velocity. These limitations may be exacerbated by various operating conditions such as, for example,...

City College of New York (CCNY) announced their research breakthroughs in the realm of photonics, the researchers successfully demonstrated an LED based on half-light half-matter quasiparticles in atomically thin materials. According to CCNY, this is also the first successful test of an electrically driven light emitter using atomically thin semiconductors embedded in a light trapping structure. (Schematic of a half-light- half-matter quasiparticle based LED developed in Vinod Menon's group using atomically thin materials. Image credit: Visakh Menon) The ...

Microdisplay solutions provider Compound Photonics (CP) announced its partnership with Plessey, the UK-based Micro LED technology builder, for developing the world’s smallest 1080p (1920x1080 pixel) GaN-on-Silicon Micro LED based microdisplay solution suitable for integration into AR and MR smart glasses. Under this partnership, Plessey will bond CP’s high speed digital low-latency backplane silicon wafer with Plessey’s proprietary GaN on Silicon monolithic Micro LED array wafer. In turn, CP will utilize its deep experience in microd...

Apple just won another Micro LED related patent with other 63 patents issued on October 8, 2019, reported Patently Apple. The patent, titled “Optical Verification System of verifying Micro Device Transfer,” focuses on mass transfer process, which has been one of the most challenging issues that slow down Micro LED commercialization. (Image: the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office) In the patent, Apple described an optical verification method and mass transfer system which includes optical imaging and inspection for monitoring Micro LED transfe...

Micro LED specialist glō is going showcase its Micro LED display at the CEATEC show from October 15 to 18 in Chiba, Japan. glō has cooperated with Kyocera and introduced a 1.8-inch Micro LED display at Display Week 2019. The Micro LED display based on LTPS backplane achieves a resolution of 200 ppi and brightness up to 1 million nits. The product will be demonstrated in Japan during the CEATEC show targeting smart wearable applications. (Image: glō) glō’s technology creates Micro LED with InGaN for RGB pixels without...

Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP partnered with Freie Universität Berlin and Technische Hochschule Wildau to work on a research project for developing a novel 3D printing process that enables easier and more efficient production of three-dimensional components using UV-LED-curable reactive resins. This allows printing times to be reduced compared to conventional additive manufacturing processes. According to the researchers, the new project, named BUERMa, standing for "Belt deposited, double UV-cured materials for 3D engineerin...

Plessey announced that it has successfully achieved native blue and green color emission on the same epitaxy wafer with its GaN-on-Silicon process. (Image: Plessey) To form RGB Micro LED displays, typical approaches are to use a pick and place process to transfer discrete R, G and B pixels or to use Native Blue LEDs as the light source for subsequent color conversion, to Red and Green. But the tiny chip size makes the placement process and conversion very difficult. Plessey’s latest patented growth approach simplifies the color conversion process by c...

Patently Apple published a new article noting that Apple was granted another Micro LED related patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The patent is titled “Micro LED mixing cups,” describing the integration of different layers in Micro LED. The mixing cups structure, according to the patent description, includes “a diffuser layer adjacent the LED, an angular filter directly over the diffuser layer and the LED, and an overcoat layer directly over the angular filter and the LED.” These layers are designed to integrate differen...

In April, an Apple rumor pointed out that the company would have launched Mini LED backlight product in the second half of 2019 and Mini LED iPad as well as Macbook since the end of 2020. In June, we have seen Apple presented its Pro Display XDR based on LED backlight display which is similar to Mini LED backlight technology but not the same. Now, Apple was said again that it will launch iPad and MacBook adopting Mini LED displays. The rumor said that the Mini LED based iPad and MacBook will use about 10,000 LED chips that are smaller than...

Mikro Mesa Technology announced a breakthrough in Micro LED mass transferring and bonding which successfully transferred Micro LED chips sized 3µm to manufacture a 4-inch display. (Image: Mikro Mesa) Mikro Mesa’s technology is capable of transfer chips sized 2 to 5 µm and can produce display with a resolution of 1,800 ppi with millions of Micro LED chips, enabling large size applications including TVs above 55-inch. In addition, the technology is featured with low temperature and press-free bonding for better yield. The low temperature process ...

Plessey announced the launch of a Micro LED Direct-Drive display platform and development kit, based on its proprietary monolithic GaN-on-Silicon technology. According to Plessey, the Direct-Drive displays provide OEM’s and product developers with a solution to retrofit current products or develop new concept designs. Sized smaller than 5x5mm, the display can deliver a brightness of 2 million nits with an input power of 250 mW. (Image: Plessey) The Direct-Drive displays are designed to presents symbolic content with pixel capabilities for 2µm. Du...