DAVIS240 first to orbit

The Sensors Group is proud to announce that its DAVIS240 Dynamic and Active Pixel Vision Sensor event camera is the first neuromorphic device of any type ever launched to space.

The DAVIS240 (see our layout image) was invented and designed by the Sensors group as part of the EU SEEBETTER and VISUALISE projects together with support of NCCR Robotics, and was fabricated as part of a dedicated wafer run by TowerSemi. It was licensed to inilabs and then inivation and was sold as the DAVIS240 event camera for use of the R&D community.

The pair of DAVIS240 launched to space was included in the custom payload as part of the UNSW Canberra Space’s M2 CubeSat satellite. It was launched with Rocket Lab’s ‘They Go Up So Fast’ mission from New Zealand March 23, 2021.

The mission has been developed and is being operated by UNSW Canberra Space for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). The DAVIS camera was developed from our DAVIS240 chip by Western Sydney University’s International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems (ICNS) (led by Andre van Schaik, with the space projects led by Greg Cohen), and was integrated with optics and FPGA into the satellites by UNSW Canberra Space. ICNS worked with inivation and the Sensors group to interface the DAVIS output to the satellite electronics.

The mission brings together emerging technologies that deliver advanced capabilities in Earth observation, maritime surveillance, and satellite communications.

The DAVIS240 was described in detail in the papers below. The main paper is the award winning 2014 JSSC article (the first one below).

C. Brandli, R. Berner, M. Yang, S. Liu, and T. Delbruck, “A 240 × 180 130 dB 3 µs Latency Global Shutter Spatiotemporal Vision Sensor,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 49, no. 10, pp. 2333–2341, Oct. 2014, doi: 10.1109/JSSC.2014.2342715. [Online]. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JSSC.2014.2342715

R. Berner, “Building Blocks for Event-Based Sensors,” ETH Zurich, Dept. of Electrical and Information Engineering (D-ITET), Zurich, Switzerland, 2011 [Online]. Available: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzvXOhBHjRheUVpSSTV6alZleHM. [Accessed: 23-Nov-2013]

R. Berner, C. Brandli, M. Yang, S.-C. Liu, and T. Delbruck, “A 240 x 180 120dB 10mW 12us-Latency Sparse Output Vision Sensor for Mobile Applications,” in Proc. 2013 Intl. Image Sensors Workshop, June 12-16, 2013 [Online]. Available: http://www.imagesensors.org/Past%20Workshops/2013%20Workshop/2013%20Papers/03-1_005-delbruck_paper.pdf. [Accessed: 24-Sep-2013]

R. Berner, C. Brandli, M. Yang, S.-C. Liu, and T. Delbruck, “A 240x180 10mW 12us Latency Sparse-Output Vision Sensor for Mobile Applications,” in Proc. 2013 Symp. VLSI, 12-14 June 2013, pp. C186–C187.