Industry Leaders Unite to Form the Embedded Vision Alliance, Enabling "Machines That See"

OAKLAND, Calif., May 31, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- More than fifteen leading technology companies— including some of the largest semiconductor companies—have joined forces to speed the adoption of computer vision capabilities in electronic products.  The ability of machines to see and understand their environments—what we call "embedded vision"—promises to transform the electronics industry with products that are more intelligent and aware of their environments, and to create significant new markets for electronic equipment and components.  A new consortium, called the Embedded Vision Alliance (www.embedded-vision.com), will enable the proliferation of embedded vision technology by providing design engineers with information, practical know-how, and industry standards.

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"Adding computer vision to embedded systems creates phenomenal new products, markets, and opportunities," according to Jeff Bier, president of BDTI.  "Just look at the Microsoft Kinect™, which added vision to the Xbox 360™—it became the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history, shipping more than 10 million units in 5 months.  But that's just a small part of the story.  From automobiles that prevent accidents to security cameras that prevent crimes, embedded vision will proliferate across a multitude of markets."

BDTI, Xilinx, and IMS Research initiated the Embedded Vision Alliance (EVA) and are being joined by Analog Devices, Apical, Avnet Electronics Marketing, CEVA, CogniVue, Freescale, National Instruments, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, Tokyo Electron Device, MathWorks, Ximea, and XMOS as founding members.  These companies share the belief that incorporating vision capabilities into future products will bring dramatic benefits to users and provide high-growth opportunities in consumer, medical, automotive, entertainment, industrial, and retail markets.

"The momentum behind embedded vision applications is growing at an astounding rate and industry collaboration is needed to enable the technology's smooth adoption in new markets," said Vin Ratford, senior vice president of worldwide marketing and business development at Xilinx.  "Xilinx is excited to be a founding member of the new Embedded Vision Alliance and looks forward to a long, successful partnership with the Alliance members.  Through this collaboration—and by delivering the right combination of performance, price points and flexibility to intelligently manage and act upon vast amounts of real-time image data within the parameters of industry standards—our programmable platforms are poised to open up a new world for systems development."

As a first step, the Embedded Vision Alliance is launching a website at www.embedded-vision.com.  The site will serve as a source of practical information that will help design engineers incorporate vision capabilities in new systems.  The EVA's future plans include newsletters, educational webinars, industry reports, technology standards, and other related activities.  Everyone is free to access the information on the website, which is maintained through member and industry contributions.  Membership information is also available at the site.

Ian Weightman, president of market research firm IMS Research, declared: "IMS Research is proud to be one of the founding members of the Embedded Vision Alliance.  The EVA shares our vision of a future where embedded computer vision positively impacts many aspects of our daily lives. With hundreds of companies now developing embedded vision components, products and applications, the EVA can become the pivotal hub that not only educates companies on the potential of embedded vision, but also enables the industry to share ideas and best practices. This will be essential for the technology to reach its true potential, and we look forward to supporting the Embedded Vision Alliance in its objectives."

About the Embedded Vision Alliance (www.embedded-vision.com):  Founded in 2011 and led by BDTI (www.BDTI.com), the Alliance represents an industry collaboration to transform the electronics industry with products that are more intelligent and aware of their environments.  It is a membership-based entity dedicated to inspiring and empowering embedded system designers to use embedded vision technology.  A key means of achieving this is providing system design engineers with the practical information that they will need in order to effectively incorporate embedded vision technology in their designs.

Member Support

Dan Leibholz, Vice President Processors & DSP Products, Analog Devices:

ADI is pleased to be a Founding Member of the Embedded Vision Alliance and we look forward to participating in this endeavor. In addition, as we have always been impressed with BDTI's clear insight into technology and markets, their leadership of this alliance is certain to foster industry communication and help drive the embedded vision community to a new level of product development. We believe that ADI's industry position as a supplier of several key embedded vision technologies—converters, sensors, digital signal processors, analog video components, and others—fit well with the opportunities in this emerging market.

Dr. Michael Tusch, CEO, Apical:

We are delighted to be a founding member of the EVA as we see its activities as being key to translating the immense possibilities offered by current computer vision research into practical technology of benefit to a wide range of end users.

Jim Beneke, Vice President, Global Technical Marketing, Avnet Electronics Marketing:

As a founding member of the Embedded Vision Alliance, Avnet Electronics Marketing is able to provide access to both the technology needed to power embedded vision and the technical training necessary to help design engineers get in on the ground-floor of this emerging technology.  Through our participation, we hope to further the EVA's mission to give engineers the knowledge and technical resources they need to continue to innovate in this space.

Eran Briman, Vice President of Marketing, CEVA:

Embedded vision capabilities are fast becoming a standard requirement in mainstream devices, including smartphones, tablets, surveillance cameras and game consoles. The Embedded Vision Alliance brings together many of the industry's leading vision technology companies to collaborate and lead the industry towards the unified goal of realizing the true potential of this exciting new technology. CEVA is proud to be a founding member of the EVA and believe our unified video and vision platform, the CEVA-MM3000, will play a central role in the proliferation of low-cost, power-efficient embedded vision technology.

Simon Morris, President and CEO, CogniVue Corporation:

CogniVue is proud to be a founding member of the Embedded Vision Alliance. The formation of the alliance recognizes the emergence of the era of "machines that see." The EVA provides a much-needed forum for system designers, technology suppliers, and partners developing embedded vision systems solutions to connect.  As such, the EVA provides an ideal forum for CogniVue to broaden our exposure and reach with vision system developers worldwide and showcase our company and programmable Image Cognition Processor technology, which is targeted at automotive vision systems, gesture recognition UI control and smart video monitoring markets.

Glen Burchers, Director of Consumer and Industrial Segment Marketing, Freescale:

Vision technology is an extremely compelling application of the high performance that Freescale's embedded processors provide, and the potential markets for embedded vision align with many markets where we compete.  We look forward to contributing our expertise, insight and technology capabilities to help create the framework and ecosystem for this exciting technology.

Jamie Smith, Director of Embedded Systems, National Instruments:

NI has many years of experience in helping engineers and scientists to more efficiently address their embedded vision challenges.  We're excited to join forces with other embedded vision leaders through the Embedded Vision Alliance, and together help advance vision systems innovation.

Taner Ozcelik, General Manager of Automotive and Embedded Solutions, NVIDIA:

We're delighted to support the Embedded Vision Alliance as it works to transform industries by speeding the development of vision-enabled products. NVIDIA is focused on delivering embedded vision solutions for consumer electronics, driver assistance systems and national defense programs. Since computer vision is extremely computationally intensive, it is perfectly suited for parallel processing. Our expertise in visual computing, combined with the power of our parallel processors, delivers exceptional results.

Niels Anderskouv, Vice President, Digital Signal Processing Systems, Texas Instruments:

For nearly a decade TI has been advancing embedded vision capabilities and enabling our customers to innovate with this exciting technology in systems such as video surveillance and automotive vision. Because of the emerging consumer demand for 'sight' in every application imaginable, TI anticipates the proliferation of embedded vision technology in the coming years —and we're prepared to deliver the industry's best solutions. We joined the Embedded Vision Alliance to help facilitate widespread embedded vision applications and participate in the sharing of best practices across the industry.

Yasuo Hatsumi, General Manager, PLD Division, Tokyo Electron Device:

Tokyo Electron Device Ltd., as a long time innovator in the consumer video space and a Xilinx Premier Alliance Partner, is pleased and excited to join the Embedded Vision Alliance to help facilitate the widespread use of embedded vision technology.  We expect to lead the way in next-generation video applications and appliances with our inrevium™ brand FPGA platforms.

Mike Bode, CEO, Ximea:

Ximea, a leading camera manufacturer for scientific and industrial cameras, and its parent company have been at the leading edge of vision systems for two decades in areas such as scientific image processing and industrial vision. The confluence of various trends, such as cheaper and better cameras, smaller and more powerful computers, and fast interconnect technologies is driving this market towards embedded vision systems with more and more intelligence moved to the camera, a market that we have anticipated for some time with our products. We have joined the Embedded Vision Alliance to accelerate further development in the field, to help drive embedded vision systems towards a broader application base, and to contribute to the growth of the industry.

Joerg Bertholdt, Vice President of Marketing, XMOS:

By joining the Embedded Vision Alliance, XMOS hopes to inspire and empower embedded system designers to incorporate vision capabilities in their products. We are looking forward to working with Alliance members to advance the rapid adoption of vision technology across a wide range of embedded applications.  We believe that our event-driven, multi-threaded XCore processors will allow developers to quickly deliver a broad range of low-cost embedded vision applications.

National Instruments and NI are trademarks of National Instruments. Other product and company names used in this document are trademarks or trade names of their respective owners.

SOURCE Embedded Vision Alliance