Cameras have relied on mechanics for operations such as changing focus since their early days, but all that may be about to change, according to Silicon Valley start-up LensVector.
The company, founded in 2006, emerged from four years in stealth mode today to announce its first product – an autofocus created with no moving parts – on silicon.
“The vision of the company is to replace all the mechanical aspects of a camera with solid-state alternatives, starting with autofocus,” Derek Proudian, chief executive, told me.
While photos had changed from a chemical to a digital format over the past 25 years, autofocus, zoom, image stabilisation and other mechanical features had remained unchanged “forever”, he said.
“We are in the process we believe of leading a revolution where we will be replacing all of those mechanical aspects with solid-state alternatives.”
LensVector is in production at, and shipping from, a 30,000-square-feet Silicon Valley facility, where it currently has capacity to produce 5m autofocus units for camera modules a month.
The transparent units are 4.5mm square and less than half a millimetre thick – much smaller than current mechanical units used (as pictured above). They are also cheaper, lighter, less inclined to break and consume less energy, the startup says.
The company believes camera phones are the current “sweet spot”of the market, with 76 per cent of the more than 1bn camera modules shipped last year turning up in phones. Only 16 per cent of these had autofocus units, but LensVector believes it can help to grow this to 100 per cent with its cheaper technology.
The camera is able to focus automatically by molecules being rotated in the silicon that is placed between the camera lens and the sensor that captures the image. This action changes the differential of the refractive index from the centre of the lens to the periphery, causing light to bend.
“By controlling the amount of rotation in the molecules, we can control exactly the amount the light will bend and therefore cause the light to focus onto the camera sensor at any distance from infinity down to as close as 10cm,” said Mr Proudian.
The technology is based on Liquid Crystal on Silicon or LCoS, which was unsuccessful when developed for rear projection TVs by Intel, but is finding new life with the camera application.
LensVector’s team, based in Mountain View, comes from the camera module industry and has won the backing of Silicon Valley venture capital firms.
It announced $30m in third-round funding today , led by Institutional Venture Partners. It had raised $23m in earlier rounds from Menlo Ventures, Samsung, Silicon Valley Bank, Mitsui and Kodak.
