Car traffic accidents still rank as the eighth-leading cause of death in the world, poor road conditions, weather, and distraction or fatigue on the part of drivers being accountable for nearly 70% of accidents. Existing Driving Monitoring Systems (DMS) and Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) are not as reliable in fog, darkness, or other difficult conditions. They simply lack one essential ability: to make use of short-wave infrared (SWIR) light. That’s when the CHEERS Project enters the game.  

CHEERS (Chip-scale visible-infrared imaging sensor) is a revolutionary advancement towards multispectral visible/SWIR imaging technology to make the roads smarter, safer, and more reliable – even during poor visibility conditions. 

We, at EYE4NIR, are proud to announce the CHEERS project has received 13.5M€ in blended finance by the European Innovation Council (EIC) within the Accelerator programme, under G.A. n. 101188959.  

A powerful new vision 

SWIR has astounding physical attributes, making it ideal to see through fog, darkness, or in otherwise low-visibility environments. Unfortunately, current-day SWIR imaging technology is expensive, bulky, and hardly scalable for the automotive sector — until today. 

A game-changing solution is needed. Our vision through the CHEERS Project is to produce an innovative multi-spectral image sensor, thanks to our patented electronic structure, which has the potential to selectively sense VIS-NIR and SWIR wavelengths within the same and every pixel. That is, we’re making real multi-band vision a reality in one affordable device. 

By integrating silicon (Si) and germanium (Ge) photodiodes on a single chip, the CHEERS sensor will be fully compatible with standard foundry fabrication processes. This opens the potential for mass production at long last — removing the cost factor that has excluded SWIR imaging from the mainstream applications. 

EYE4NIR is breaking the frontiers in bringing these premium sensors to commercial reality. Being a fabless image sensor company, our vision with CHEERS is to design the world’s first electrically tunable VIS/SWIR imager to mass-produce. We see strong deployment in the automotive sector, where DMS and ADAS products are gaining traction increasingly, driven also by new regulation for on-road safety. 

 And there’s more to it: the flexibility of this multispectral technology means that it is indeed an enabling technology for countless other applications (i.e. industrial automation, consumer electronics, or non-invasive quality control)  

Looking ahead 

Throughout the next several months, we will share updates on our prototypes, lab testing, and real-life applications. Our goal is simple but ambitious: to democratize multispectral, SWIR-enabled imaging sensors to be affordable, convenient, and viable for the mass market — starting with cars, but on to many industries in the future. 

Stay tuned for more stories and learnings as we go on.