Infra-Red and Hyperspectral Image Sensor Market Sees Technology Roadmap to Lower Prices and Higher Volume
Helping to make autonomous vehicles safe with cameras designed for low visibility or ensuring the best crop quality for farmers are just two benefits of short-wave infra-red (SWIR) sensing technologies and highlights their high versatility. SWIR sensors and hyperspectral imaging are two of the largest types of emerging image sensors, and IDTechEx predicts the market value will reach US$739 million by 2034, highlighting just how valuable the technology will be.
Autonomous Vehicles and SWIR
ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems) and autonomous vehicles use SWIR sensors to see in low visibility conditions such as fog or dust and uses light in ‘eye-blind’ regions to illuminate objects without affecting human vision. Object classification done by SWIR sensors can identify specific objects in the road, from animals to obstructions. This technology can also distinguish liquid water from ice on the road, allowing the vehicle to notify the driver of an impending hazard.
Quality Control
SWIR sensors are in demand largely due to their versatility, which provides value across many sectors. Quality control and foreign material detection in food are another use case for SWIR sensors. They identify the difference between similar-looking materials like salt and sugar and even foreign objects like stone and metal that could contaminate produce. Quality control also extends to detecting counterfeit bank notes, showing up characteristics of real money by distinguishing its more complex layers.
InGaAs vs Alternatives: Commercialization Status of SWIR Sensors
Due to its sensitivity and range capabilities, InGaAs (indium gallium arsenide) semiconductor technology has been vital for the development of SWIR sensors. However, InGaAs can lack the resolution to make it suitable for wider applications, which is why cheaper alternatives are sought. The most promising strategy is to increase the sensitivity of silicon to long wavelengths by printing a layer of quantum dots or organic semiconductors onto silicon read-out circuits. Relative to InGaAs, this approach could be over 100x cheaper to manufacture since existing readout electronics can be used.
InGaAs has been developed over many years, so it is likely to remain in use for some time for high-end applications. IDTechEx’s report, “Emerging Image Sensor Technologies 2024-2034: Applications and Markets”, explores more of these future, more cost-effective alternatives that will open up high-volume applications.
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Hyperspectral Imaging
Hyperspectral image sensors can detect many different EM bands returning a subject’s spectral fingerprints that are undetectable to the naked eye. This spectral information will be different for different chemicals, providing an easy way for a computer to tell the difference between, for example, a plastic that can be recycled and one that can’t.
Food freshness can also be determined using hyperspectral imaging. Produce such as fish and other raw meats that might not always look bad at first could actually be hiding not-so-healthy germs. Hyperspectral imaging technology could show up textures and colors associated with a lack of freshness and could potentially help establishments avoid customer complaints.
Farmers can benefit from hyperspectral imaging in crop production. Using the technology from a bird' s-eye view could aid the early detection of weeds and assess moisture levels showing up in different patterns and colors, helping farmers predict the quality levels of the crops. Due to this technology’s detailed and thorough capabilities, it has great potential to grow across many different sectors.
Combining Emerging Imaging Technologies
Emerging image sensors have the potential to improve the quality of products and produce across all sectors so drivers can feel safer and chefs can be assured their food is fresh. Looking further into the future, development is underway, combining hyperspectral and SWIR technologies. This could offer a cheaper alternative to current methods of hyperspectral imaging with similar performance levels, opening up doors for new innovations and opportunities in different sectors.
For more information and examples of emerging sensor technologies, see IDTechEx’s report on the topic, “Emerging Image Sensor Technologies 2024-2034: Applications and Markets”. Find out more about this report, including downloadable sample pages, by visiting www.IDTechEx.com/ImageSensors.
For the full portfolio of sensors market research available from IDTechEx, please see www.IDTechEx.com/Research/Sensors.
Beware of hype overselling potential. The use cases listed here existed 20 years ago, but the devil is in the details. Even if the sensor FPA was free, cameras, lenses, software and applications support adds up to a pretty penny. HD resolution InGaAs FPAs are available, as are Collodial Quantum Dot type but the volume is still small. If SWIR really penetrated fog and smoke, investment in high volume semiconductor wafer processes and large diameter InP wafer substrates would have negated the cost disadvantages of older InGaAs manufacturing. SWIR cameras have strong advantage seeing in fog over visible-only cameras, but are not much better than the human eye. SWIR has advatages in sensing plant moisture and so is playing a role in precision agriculture and in inspection of ag materials at processing plants. But this is not a huge market because diode array spectrometers are cheaper and suit the purpose well. Standard SWIR does not see the longer wavelengths needed for identifying plastics, but the lower QE of CQD extended SWIR cameras hurts the application. Reflectance spectroscopy needs long integration times to differentiate the plastics. However to process the plastic waste stream at volume, one can only afford 1 ms.