Machine vision groups create group for exploring API standards

The Khronos Group, an open consortium creating graphics and compute interoperability standards, and the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA), the leading European industry association dedicated to vision technology, announced the formation of an Embedded Camera API Exploratory Group to explore industry interest in the creation of open royalty-free API standards for controlling embedded cameras and sensors.

All participants will be able to discuss use cases and requirements for new interoperability standards to accelerate market growth and reduce development costs in embedded markets using vision and sensor processing and associated acceleration. If the Exploratory Group reaches significant consensus then Khronos and EMVA will work to initiate the proposed standardization projects at the appropriate organizations.

All sensor and camera manufacturers, silicon vendors, and software developers working on vision and sensor processing are invited to participate in this initiative.

The Embedded Camera API Exploratory Group has been created in response to industry requests. Increasingly, camera sensors are being tightly integrated with image, vision and inferencing accelerators in self-contained systems. Innovation and efficiency in the embedded vision market is becoming constrained by the lack of open cross-vendor camera control API standards to reduce development and integration costs of multiple advanced sensors and cameras. A consistent set of interoperability standards and guidelines for embedded cameras and sensors could streamline deployment by manufacturers and system integrators by enabling control of a wide range of camera sensors, depth sensors, camera arrays and ISP hardware to generate sophisticated image streams for downstream processing by diverse accelerators.

Any companies, universities, consortiums, open-source participants, and industry experts who are willing to sign an NDA are welcome to join, at no cost. All participants will have an equal voice in exploring industry needs for, and benefits of, creating a consensus to develop a scope of work (SOW) document describing the objectives and high-level direction of standardization initiatives of value to the industry.

All Exploratory Group discussions will be covered by a simple project NDA to encourage open discussions. The Group is open to all proposals and relevant topics but will not discuss detailed technical design contributions to protect participants intellectual property (IP). If a SOW is agreed, Khronos and EMVA will work to initiate the standardization work at the most suitable host organizations or open source projects, using those organizations’ normal collaborative agreements and IP frameworks.

“Judging by the significant industry interest, the time seems right to organize an effort around identifying and aligning on the need for interoperability APIs for embedded cameras and sensors,” said Neil Trevett, Khronos Group president in a press release. “Our work is also very complementary to EMVA, and we are delighted that the two organizations are working together to bring a meaningful quorum from diverse parts of the industry into this cooperative exploratory process.”

”We are delighted to work with Khronos on this initiative to commonly understand the industry needs for the future of embedded vision,” said Dr. Chris Yates, EMVA president. “Both the EMVA and the Khronos group have a well-established history of standardization developments which enable industry to develop new products more simply, whilst ensuring friction is reduced in the market. This Exploratory Group is an excellent approach to understanding broader industry needs and will bring together many companies and views in an open forum. We look forward to working closely with the Khronos Group and welcoming all new and existing participants to this important initiative for the vision community.”

– Edited from an European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) and Khronos Group press release by CFE Media. See more Control Engineering stories on machine vision.

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