Unlocking devices upon face recognition for a few additional micro Watts
What is µWAI?
CEA-Leti's autonomous imager µWAI activates any device upon recognition of a specific pattern — e.g., unlocking a smartphone upon the recognition of a face.
It is the first highly efficient, compact and ultra-low power smart awaken system designed for everyday small appliances:
- Consuming 10,000 × less than low-power camera plus processor set
- Highly compact: 1 € coin
- Privacy-compliant AI-based recognition: near human detection performance (95%)
- wide operating lightening condition
- "Always-on" CR1025 Battery lifetime: 5 years
- 3-6µW operation
Applications:
- Mobile devices: automatic switching, face identification.
- Smart home: contact-less smart switches of household appliances, sport and entertainment devices.
- Smart building/smart home: face recognition, people counting, alarm triggering
- Automotive: in cabin situation awareness, driver identification
- Automotive: out cabin parking situation awareness, smart door unlocking system
What's new? :
µWAI features a novel readout and processing architecture co-designed with an optimized algorithmic pipeline providing ultra-low power wake-up modes and compact silicon implementation. It is the first smart image sensor jointly featuring:
- Auto-exposure for all lightening condition and 88dB dynamic range,
- Motion detection and feature extraction for event based functioning,
- AI-based object recognition triggering highly reliable identification.
These key features enable highly reliable decision taking for few tens of pJ/pixel/frame, outperforming the best "off-the-shelf" solutions.
What's next?
The core of CEA-Leti's autonomous imager is its recognition engine. CEA-Leti's team is working hand in hand with an industrial partner towards the development of specific smart imager products.
- This technology can be applied to other use cases, leveraging the institute expertise in integrating a compact recognition engine within a smart image sensor. CEA-Leti tailors competitive solutions to meet the requirements of its partners.