The History of Centeye

Pre-Centeye days at the Naval Research Laboratory

The genesis of Centeye came out of the Ph.D. research conducted by Geoffrey L Barrows during his employment at the US Naval Research Laboratory and during his graduate studies at the University of Maryland at College Park. In 1996, NRL embarked on a project to build a “micro unmanned aerial vehicle (uUAV)” for anticipated Navy needs. (The acronym uUAV was soon shortened to MAV for “micro air vehicle” when it was realized that it may be a few decades before centimeter tall human pilots would be developed…)

 

At the time in the mid-90′s, there were many proposals for “air frames”, “propulsion”, and “control” for such MAVs. There were almost no proposals for batteries (a still-lingering problem) and no proposals for navigation. Geoffrey Barrows, searching for a Ph.D. dissertation topic, was at the time intrigued by biologically inspired computation including so-called “neural networks”. At a meeting with Dr. Clint Kelly of SAIC, Barrows was pointed towards flying insects as a model for how one could provide navigation to such a MAV.

 

Barrows then immersed himself into a variety of papers ranging from the navigation of flying insects to neuromorphic engineering, a nascent field in which neuron-like circuits are implemented in analog VLSI circuitry. Of particular interest was the implementation of an optical flow sensor in a tiny package weighing a few grams or less. This early work led to the first of Barrows’ implementations of optical flow sensors, including a demonstration of altitude control of a fixed-wing RC aircraft using an eight pixel optical flow sensor in the summer of 2000. These early implementations are summarized primarily in U.S. Patents 6,020,953, 6,194,695, and 6,384,907.

 

To the current day, Barrows is grateful for his early experiences at the Naval Research Laboratory.

Founding of Centeye in late 2000

Perhaps caught up in the irrationality of the first dot-com boom of the late 1990′s, Barrows founded Centeye to commercialize these optical flow sensors for a wide range of uses beyond MAVs to include toys, distributed sensor networks, and more. Centeye commenced operations in November of 2000.

2001:

  • Centeye demonstrates altitude hold using an early 32 pixel “Ladybug” sensor.

2002:

  • Development of the 88 pixel Ladybug sensor.
  • Demonstration of altitude hold over snow with the 88 pixel Ladybug sensor.

2003:

  • Ladybug sensor reduced to 4.5 grams
  • Centeye demonstrates of obstacle avoidance of a 100-gram fixed-wing aircraft from a tree line using three 88 pixel Ladybug sensors. We believe this to be the first demonstration of obstacle avoidance on an aircraft of this size.
  • Barrows receives TR-100 award from the MIT Technology Review.

2004:

2005:

  • Centeye prototypes Mantis optical flow sensor.

2007:

  • Centeye develops the Centeye Arz optical flow sensor.
  • Centeye delivers first multiaperture optical system (MAOS) to the US Air Force.

2008:

  • Centeye obtains first demonstrations of obstacle avoidance and hover in place by hacking a toy RC helicopter with 6 Centeye Arz sensors.
  • Barrows profiled as “inventor of the week” by MIT-Lemelson program.

2009:

  • Centeye develops first Faraya64 and Faraya256 chips for use in numerous projects.
  • Centeye demonstrates vision-based hover in place with a 3.0 gram sensor suite on an 18cm toy helicopter.
  • Centeye develops a set of techniques for implementing a millimeter thin wide field of view camera; patents pending…
  • Harvard University, with Centeye as a subcontractor, is awarded a 5-year grant by NSF to develop a robotic bee. This project will lead to, among other things, the development of current open source devices by Centeye.

2010:

  • U.S. Patents 7,652,754 and 7,659,967 awarded.
  • Centeye develops Faraya64plus, Faraya256plus, FireflySmall, FireflyLarge, HexRect, Tam2, and Tam4 image sensor.
  • A transformative event- Centeye staff participate in the first open source hardware summit (OSHW) in Queens, New York City, on September 23, 2010. This event inspired us to develop a “open source” product line to complement our less open activities.
  • Centeye kicks off our user community Embedded Eye.
  • Centeye prototypes a 125 milligram optical flow sensor.
  • Centeye delivers MAOS-II system.
  • Centeye purchases an Arduino microcontroller. No, it is not as powerful as a TI 6000-series DSP. Not even close. But it eventually inspires the ArduEye product line.

2011:

  • Centeye starts shipping ArduEye Arduino-compatible sensor shields.