Agenda

CMOS image sensors (CIS) are at the core of modern imaging systems, serving a wide range of applications from consumer electronics to automotive, security, and industrial markets. This presentation will begin with an overview of the CIS market, including its current value, key drivers, and a five-year forecast, highlighting the main trends shaping demand across applications. Beyond market analysis, Yole Group combines these insights with teardown and reverse engineering activities to closely track technology evolution and industry changes. By dismantling commercial devices from system level down to the semiconductor level, it is possible to identify key design choices, integration approaches, and process technologies used by leading players. The presentation will illustrate how products are analyzed from full device teardown to cross-sectioning and physical analysis to extract detailed information on sensor architecture, stacking, and integration. This approach provides a practical and up-to-date view of the CIS ecosystem, linking market trends with real product implementation.

Bullets: • CIS market overview and 5-year forecast • Key application and demand trends • Teardown and reverse engineering methodology • From system dismantling to cross-section and physical analysis • Linking market insights with real device analysis
 
Anas Chalak | Market & Technology Analyst – Imaging, Yole Group

The global image sensor market is undergoing a significant shift, with Asian suppliers playing a central role in this transformation. This presentation examines key market dynamics, technology evolution, and demand across mobile, automotive, and security applications, highlighting how Asian suppliers are strengthening their competitive positioning and driving the next phase of market growth.
 
Jeffrey Mathews | Senior Analyst, TechInsights

Image sensors have always been measured by how well they serve the human eye — resolution, color accuracy, low-light performance, and dynamic range that translates to a beautiful photograph or video. That mandate isn't going away. Users still expect stunning capture from every camera they carry. But a new, parallel demand has emerged: the same sensor must now also serve as the front-end for machine intelligence — powering real-time scene understanding, contextual AI, and spatial computing in form factors that are always on and severely constrained. The next generation of image sensors must therefore serve two audiences simultaneously: the human viewer who expects premium image quality, and the AI pipeline that requires temporal consistency, power-efficient readout, and perceptual richness beyond what any display can render. In this talk, we explore how sensors are deployed today across both photography and AI workloads, where the tensions and synergies lie between these dual objectives, and what architectural choices — from pixel design to readout strategy to on-sensor processing — will define sensors that excel at both. The challenge for our industry is no longer choosing between the eye and the algorithm. It's designing silicon that refuses to compromise on either.
 
Harish Venkataraman | Director of Camera and Sensing Architecture and Systems, Meta Inc.

Rihito Kuroda | Professor, Tohoku University

Jiwon Lee | Principal Member of Technical Staff, imec

As imaging applications evolve, the demand for enhanced CMOS Image Sensor (CIS) sensitivity has become a key challenge. From low-light and high-speed capture to depth sensing, today’s passive imaging technologies rely heavily on the quality and capabilities of CMOS image sensors. Maximizing photon collection in both visible and near-infrared wavelengths is now essential to unlock new capabilities and deliver superior image quality — even in the darkest environments.

3L-OPTRONICS – standing for Low-Light Level Optronics – wants to democratize dual day / night vision through the development of a low-cost CMOS technology in both large public applications – smartphones, automotive – and specific applications – space, scientific instrumentation, industrial vision and defence. To address low-light imaging needs, our efforts are directed at incorporating high-performance, near perfect anti-reflective solution: black silicon. Black silicon is a wideband spectral and large angular acceptance anti-reflective technology resulting from random surface texturing. 3L-OPTRONICS integrates this technology on CIS by a patented process highly scalable industrially – from 8” wafers for in-house processing to 12” wafers for licensed foundries – without the need to modify the surrounded electronics and the pixel architecture, for both large and small pixels pitch.

Our latest experimental results on a 10µm pitch CIS optimized for visible imaging show a sensitivity improvement across the entire silicon absorption spectrum, notably by doubling quantum efficiency, with a minimum dark current degradation. One visual method for revealing the added value of black silicon in image sensor is to capture images at low light levels – in accordance with French night-time lighting standards. Through this study, we demonstrate that black silicon pushes the limits of CIS night vision capabilities from night level 3 – 10 to 2 mlux – to level 4 – 2 to 0.7 mlux. Based on these results, our simulations show that black silicon could also represent a breakthrough in efforts to reduce sensor power consumption and increase readout speed.

To push furthermore the night vision capabilities sensor’s limits, hardware processing is combined with in-house contrast enhancement and denoising image processing algorithms powered by AI. On this part, experiments have been made in real night-time conditions – estimated as night level 4 between 2 and 0.7 mlux – and give us the opportunity to compare the performance of software processing on a reference CIS and black silicon CIS. This study shows not only that black silicon pushes the limits of low-light imaging capabilities but also enhances AI performance on the resulting images.

Our research shows that black silicon is a real game changer of CIS performance limits thanks to its impact on the entire acquisition chain. The next step is to integrate it into CIS with smaller pixels and higher resolution to demonstrate its technological compatibility in the smartphone sector.
 
Ludovic Escoubas | CEO, 3L-OPTRONICS

It covers optic tech development history of mobile image sensors into deep sub-micron, and the new introduction of meta-surface technology to overcome the limit of conventional sensor optic technology, and their recent published results, then conclude with a few published result of extreme pixel scaling possibility with meta optics technology as an outlook.
 
Dr. In-Sung Joe | Principal Engineer, Samsung Electronics

Dr. Xinyang Wang | Founder, Chairman and CEO, Gpixel Group

Speaker TBC

Robots are rapidly moving beyond structured industrial environments into warehouses, hospitals, retail stores, homes, and public spaces. To operate safely and autonomously, they require increasingly sophisticated vision systems capable of perceiving, understanding, and interacting with the physical world.

This panel will explore how advances in image sensors, 3D sensing, edge AI, and perception algorithms are enabling the next generation of intelligent robots. Industry leaders will discuss the sensor technologies shaping robotics, the challenges of machine perception in real-world environments, and the future roadmap for robot vision systems.

Key Audience Takeaways

• Technology roadmap for robot vision systems
• Future image sensor requirements for robotics
• Impacts of Robotics vision on image sensors, machine vision, industrial automation, and defense
• Emerging opportunities in industrial, service, and humanoid robotics
• The convergence of sensing, perception, and AI