Immervision develops and licenses wide-angle lenses and image processing technologies, and its patented image enhancement algorithms and software technologies deliver significant improvements in image quality and remove the inherent distortions associated with the use of wide-angle cameras, particularly at the edges of the frame.
Immervision’s technologies have shipped in more than 50 million devices to date through its broad customer base, which includes Acer, Dahua, Garmin, Hanwha, Lenovo, Motorola, Quanta, Sony and Vivotek.
Under the partnership agreement, CEVA has made a $10 million technology investment to secure exclusive licensing rights to Immervision’s advanced portfolio of wide-angle image processing technology and software.
This includes real-time adaptive de-warping, stitching, image colour and contrast enhancement, and electronic image stabilisation. CEVA will also license Immervision’s Data-in-Picture proprietary technology, which integrates within each video frame fused sensory data, such as that offered by Hillcrest Labs (a business recently acquired by CEVA). This adds contextual information to each frame that enables better image quality, video stabilisation and accurate machine vision in AI applications.
The companies will also collaborate in licensing full end-to-end solutions comprised of Immervision’s patented wide-angle Panomorph optical lens design and the complementary image enhancement software.
Immervision’s hardware-agnostic software portfolio will continue to be offered for all System-on-Chip (SoC) platforms containing a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and in a power-optimized version for SoCs containing the CEVA-XM4 or CEVA-XM6 intelligent vision DSPs.
Along with Immervision’s software, CEVA also offers a broad range of other computer vision and AI software technologies, such as the CEVA Deep Neural Network (CDNN) - a neural networks graph compiler, the CEVA-SLAM software development kit, and the CEVA-CV optimized computer vision software library.
Commenting Gideon Wertheizer, CEO of CEVA, said: "This strategic partnership and technology investment with Immervision provides CEVA with a significant market advantage for the fast growing wide-angle camera market, particularly in smartphones, surveillance, ADAS and robotics.”
Pascal Nini, CEO of Immervision, said: "CEVA’s partnership enables us to further innovate our Panomorph lens and imaging technologies, and to capitalise on CEVA’s market channels, global sales and support offices. Beyond accelerating our penetration and growth in key markets, this partnership also presents a great opportunity to build innovation in deep seeing. CEVA’s DSP and AI processor portfolio and Immervision’s new AI algorithms will unleash the power of wide-angle intelligent vision at the edge.”