According to the World Health Organization, each year, more than 1.3 million lives are tragically lost, making it the eighth most significant cause of mortality worldwide, and 50 million injuries occur because of road accidents. Vehicles collisions stand as the primary cause of fatalities for individuals aged 15 to 29.
Furthermore, road crashes exert a substantial economic burden, contributing to a staggering annual cost of 180 billion euros in Europe alone. Adverse weather, hazardous road conditions, as well as distracted or fatigued driving, collectively contribute to nearly 70% of all accidents.
In recent years, Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS) and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have displayed their potential to enhance driving safety, however, these systems still fall short in compromised visibility conditions, precisely where their effectiveness holds the utmost importance. They use sensors which only operate in the VISIBLE spectrum whose information is read by augmented vision algorithms.
SWIR (short-wave infrared) imaging is what is missing. With its ability to ensure clear visibility in critical scenarios such as fog, heavy rain, and low-illumination, along with full immunity to sun glare and intricate shadow patterns, SWIR imaging technology is uniquely well-suited to address the challenges currently faced by DMS and ADAS systems catering for the enhancement of autonomous driving systems in the medium to long term.
SWIR imaging systems have been employed for decades, mainly in military and scientific domains, because of their very high manufacturing costs.
In this context, EYE4NIR is pioneering a game-changing imaging technology based on two pillars:
● Materials: the technology is based on silicon (Si) and germanium (Ge) photodiodes, monolithically integrated into a single device which is sensitive to the SWIR and visible-near infrared (VIS-NIR) spectral bands. Si and Ge seamlessly integrate with standard silicon (Si) foundry processes, thus allowing for a sharp manufacturing cost decrease. Thanks to a unique patented electronic structure, the device allows to electronically select between the SWIR and VIS-NIR bands, thus enabling versatile multi-spectral operation in one single chip.
● CMOS read-out integrated circuit (ROIC): the signal from the device is read through a novel ROIC design concept, specifically developed to minimize the noise of the system (patent pending).
Within CHEERS project, EYE4NIR aims at laying the foundation for manufacturing high resolution VIS-NIR/SWIR imagers ready for commercialization in the automotive sectors and afterwards other domains such as industrial automation and consumer electronics.
