Centeye and Vertical Integration

Centeye is a microelectronics firm in Washington DC that specializes in vision chip or visual microsensor technology for a variety of machine vision applications. Our technology allows the implementation of complete machine vision systems sufficiently light for usage on small robotic platforms. Using custom-designed “vision chips” as an imager front end, these sensors weigh between 0.2 grams and 15 grams apiece (including optics, imager, and processor) and yet can process imagery at several hundred or more frames per second.

Vertical Integration of Technology

Our unique characteristic is our vertically integrated approach to technology development. A vision system typically incorporates a variety of technology layers, some optical, some electronic, and some algorithmic. The industry standard is for a company to focus on one or at most two of these layers. This limits the selection of the system components to largely “off the shelf” components that were designed for general applications and typically have a cumbersome interface. The result is a vision system that includes excessive features and, as a result, is needlessly complex and large.

Our approach at Centeye is to design a vision system across multiple layers. This allows us to include the best set of features for a set of applications. Equally important, this allows us to eliminate unnecessary features and complexity, resulting in a smaller, simpler, and faster system.

The benefits of such a vertically integrated approach have been proven by our past results. We have, for example, implemented a sensor capable of computing optical flow at 1400 Hz using a 10MIPS microcontroller, implemented a complete “smart camera” in a 125 milligram package, and implemented a 3 gram omnidirectional sensor suite for a small RC-class helicopter.