36KR has learned that VOMMA, a provider of 3D machine inspection solutions for optical field cameras, has completed a Pre-A round of investment with an amount of tens of millions. The financing is exclusively invested by Atomic Venture Capital, and Li Haotian, CEO and co-founder of Yimu Technology, told 36kR that this round of financing will be used to increase research and development investment, team building, as well as the procurement and construction of production equipment.

Founded in 2019, Yimu Technology began to research light field technology as early as 2012, and launched the first industrial light field camera system with independent intellectual property rights in 2017. Li Haotian told 36KR that as a 3D machine vision inspection provider, Yimu Technology is the only company in China that has mastered all software and hardware core technologies such as optical design, packaging and manufacturing of optical field cameras, and image three-dimensional rendering, and has advantages in optical field algorithm, optical design and hardware packaging.

 01.Deep tillage light field technology

Compared with 2D vision, industrial 3D vision has higher resolution, higher accuracy and fast detection ability, and is less interfered by ambient light. 3D vision in 3C consumer electronics, automotive manufacturing, semiconductor and other fields have broad prospects, 36kr's previous article estimates: only automotive manufacturing, medical, financial and other long-tail areas of industrial 3D vision market size can reach 100 billion.

he 3D imaging principle and scheme of the light field camera is different from that of line laser and structured light. It can obtain multi-view, multi-focal plane and multi-dimensional information, and realize the functions of single camera, one shot, multi-focus, multi-view and three-dimensional measurement/modeling.

奕目科技VOMMA4300系列光场相机

02.Cutting into Samsung's supply chain

In the field of industrial quality inspection, the light field camera does not need to actively project laser or structured light, is less interfered by ambient light and occlusion, has more advantages in the three-dimensional detection of photosensitive materials, transparent/translucent materials, surface reflective materials, and solves the problem of rapid and high-precision detection of three-dimensional defects in complex and high-precision scenes such as glass, film, and tiny metal.

According to Yimu Technology, there is currently a lack of effective 3D solutions in the fields of screen layering, MEMS silicon wheat chips for TWS and gold wire detection on a global scale, and this is where Yimu Technology's technical unique lies.

At present, the optical field cameras of Yimu Technology have been used in semiconductor MEMS chip detection, CIS chip layering detection, 3C parts detection, mobile phone screen layering detection, chip gold wire detection and other high-precision detection fields. Downstream customers include Huaxing Yuanchuang, Shanghai Academy of Aerospace Technology, Samsung and so on.

36kR learned that Yimo Technology has cut into Samsung's industrial chain for layered detection of wireless Bluetooth headphones, mobile phone cameras and mobile phone screens. After Samsung Display tracking and feedback, the 3D light field camera produced by Yimu Technology can effectively and stably solve the detection results that cannot be achieved by traditional vision solutions.

 03.A burst of growth is expected in 2022

Li Haotian told 36KR that optical field technology has a high threshold and high technical difficulties in hardware and software, and requires years of technical polishing, application accumulation, and huge cost input to enter the product landing stage.

Compared with other solutions such as structured light, the cost of light-field cameras is high, and it is expected that Yimu Technology's products will reach large-scale mass production in 2022, and the cost of products is expected to further explore, reaching an order of magnitude with other similar products.

Yimu Technology's light field camera is expected to have 80-100 sets of shipments this year, with revenue of about 20 million yuan. There may be an explosive growth in 2022, reaching 200-300 units of shipments and sales revenue of about 50 million yuan.

In addition to continuing to deepen industrial quality inspection, in the future, Yimo technology will also expand to new application scenarios such as biomedicine and VR/AR.

Zhao Yang, vice president of Atomic Venture Capital, believes that at present, 3D vision is a rapidly growing blue ocean market, and under the rising labor costs and end customers' requirements for data traceability, the industrial quality inspection industry has an increasingly high demand for unmanned and automation, and light field technology has well solved the customer's pain and difficulty in the field of screen layered detection and chip gold wire detection. At present, only Yimu Technology and Germany's Raytrix in the world have realized the product landing of the optical field camera industry quality inspection, and the future space is broad.