After the iPhone X completely activated the depth camera market, structural light, binoculars and ToF quickly became hot with the vents, and the competition between them has been quite anxious.Among the world's mainstream mobile phone manufacturers, Huawei has unswervingly chosen ToF, and Apple, which has always been optimistic about structured light technology, has recently thrown an olive branch to the ToF industry.The extremely large amount of “quantity” in the mobile phone market has driven the rapid development of the ToF industry and the supply chain, which has made it leap into the eyes of people.
For the public, ToF is a brand new 3D vision technology, but its technical route has already been in the industry. For example, there are ST, ams and Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and Infineon under the two technical routes of single point and area array to layout . But few domestic manufacturers in the semiconductor industry have conducted in-depth research.Along the way from the technology and market positions of international semiconductor giants, for ToF technology, Bill Liu not only has deep technical accumulation, but also has a unique idea.In 2017, with the development of the industry, Bill Liu returned to Shanghai with ToF Dream and like-minded partners to establish OPNOUS.
      After more than two years of development, OPNOUS quickly emerged from the industry.When asked why he was able to arrive at this point, Bill Liu said with a smile, "favourable climate and geographical conditions and support of the people"
As a member of the 3D visual industry chain, like most companies in this field in China, the growth of OPNOUS is inseparable from the development of the industry, that is, the "favourable climate" .3D vision first appeared in consumer products such as Microsoft Kinect and Intel RealSense. In recent years, with the continuous development of hardware technology, algorithms and software, precision and practicality have been greatly improved. "3D depth camera + gesture / face "Recognition" has the basis for large-scale entry into mobile intelligent terminals, so Apple's large-scale adoption of structured light technology has completely activated the 3D visual market and opened a new era.

“With Apple in the forefront, smartphones have gradually developed into a market that 3D vision companies can't ignore, so we have also paid more attention. Because smartphone shipments are large, it can be used in the entire 3D visual industry chain. All aspects of the industry are being promoted to promote the optimization and development of the industrial chain."
        Driven by the smartphone market, 3D vision has gradually evolved and penetrated into the fields including face recognition related applications, pan-robot applications, smart security, assisted driving and ar/vr. However, these camps are not completely hot. As a key subdivision in the field of artificial intelligence, the 3D visual field has therefore been tepid. Everyone realizes that the entire 3D visual industry chain is still far from mature and still in the early stages of development.

  In fact, the development prospects of the three technologies have always been controversial, and as everyone becomes more and more aware of 3D visual technology, from the second half of 2018, the argument of "ToF is a technical dark horse" began to appear in each Big news.

 Generally speaking, 3D vision is an imaging technology based on the distance of three-dimensional space, so its basic function is ranging, and the solution based on 3D vision technology in reality is also inseparable.Due to different technical principles, the three technical solutions have their own characteristics in this function.
       Compared with passive structured light and binocular technology, although it is relatively backward, ToF has a wider range of applications in ranging. The coverage distance can range from structured light to laser radar, and it can be near or far, very flexible; while  ToF technology is also more adaptable in capturing fast-changing/moving objects. Due to its superior overall performance, it was once favored by many manufacturers in the industry (Huawei, Samsung, etc.), and the agglomeration effect gradually formed by the application side made the entire ToF industry develop gradually and form a advantage of  “ geographical conditions” .

 "Long-established big factories tend to focus only on the core Sensor part, and we are eager to take the direction of the system linkage, there are technical reasons. For example, the photo will be overexposed or underexposed, in order to solve them, the choice provided by traditional cameras is to adjust the shutter and aperture. But ToF technology provides a third solution, adjust the light, then it will be more flexible, the overall solution will have more The possibility, for example, I can make the pattern inside the lighting module, adopt the scheme of illuminating code modulation, etc. I can handle it not only in the spatial domain but also in the time domain."
       From the perspective of the system as a whole, OPNOUS not only has the complete solution capability, but also found that it can provide feasible solutions for many problems that cannot be solved by existing technologies and move toward innovation.

 Bill Liu added that the three modules belong to different technical categories and involve cross-border. It requires high technical for talents, OPNOUS can realize the development of three-legged systems as we just happens to have "support of the people" .

  Because of the advantages of “favourable climate and geographical conditions”, and under the capital and industry-driven “protection”, OPNOUS has gradually grown into a new and able to expand the market with the international counterparts in the ToF field, and is accelerating innovation.“OPNOUS has been established for more than two years, although there are no shortage of talents with more than 15 years of experience in engineering development, we still need time to polish our products, keep improving, and continue to learn and grow.”

  Look up at the stars and keep your feet on the ground. Indulge in technology, plunged into the product, and unaffected by the outside. ToF industry chose OPNOUS rather than  OPNOUS chose ToF intelligently.