OmniVision OV810 SmartSensor: OmniVision Technologies, Inc. one of the world's leading suppliers of CMOS image sensors, will offer the toy industry a glimpse into the future of smart toys at the American International Toy Fair in New York this week. The company will demonstrate applications that use its new OV810 SmartSensor(TM) with optical recognition technology. The OV810 is the first low-cost optical recognition sensor designed specifically for the consumer toy market. Toys that incorporate it are able to recognize, learn and recall patterns and human faces and react accordingly. OmniVision believes the OV810 will facilitate the development of many affordable smart toys for mass market introduction by as early as Christmas 2005.

"Optical recognition is not new in the toy market. Interactive toys such as Sony's Aibo have already employed this technology, but at the high-end of the toy market," said Hasan Gadjali, director of marketing for advanced products. "The OV810 is able to provide affordable, intelligent optical sensor technology for mass market toys, is highly customizable for a wide variety of applications and has the potential to create many new categories of toys."

OmniVision will be demonstrating applications for the OV810, such as facial recognition, motion tracking and pattern recognition, at the American International Toy Fair. Examples of applications in these areas include:

• A doll that is able to recognize its owner or react to patterns as walking and talking.
• A sensor embedded into the cover of a private diary that will open only if it recognizes a certain face.
• A toy train that can read signals and respond accordingly.
• A toy ATM or piggy bank that can be trained to recognize dollar bills.
• A toy such as a car or an animal that can track a light or line on the ground.

About the OV810: The OV810 SmartSensor is a low-cost, low-power CMOS image sensor with an on-chip 8-bit microcontroller designed specifically for toy applications. It provides 112 x 112 pixel black and white image data for optical pattern recognition. The OV810 SmartSensor uses a Recognition Engine for optical pattern recognition and is capable of learning new image patterns. It also has a gate array that can be mask-programmed to suit particular developer specifications. The OV810 is available now and will be priced under $1.50 per unit in die form for volume production.

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