Seminar

Abstract:
This talk briefly presents smart sensors based on integrated circuits and systems to detect various natural signals and extract their special features. Advanced transducers implemented in small platform don’t only convert analog nature to digital domain, but also recognize important features without complicated processing, allowing electronic devices to communicate with humans ubiquitously. Two specific sensing interfaces, a 3D image sensor and an implantable neural recording IC, were implemented to establish new human-computer interfaces.
First, the 3D image sensor with the depth sensing technique based on time-of-flight (ToF) will be introduced. The proposed 3D image sensor incorporates a time-division multiplexing architecture that alternately captures color and depth image from each pixel with a unified pixel structure. The depth image makes it possible to track a target object and eventually recognize human gestures for touchless user interfaces.
Next, it will be shown a delta-modulation based neural spike recording device that enables to read out neuron activities related to our thinking. Because the neural recording device should be implanted in a brain, it has very strict constraint on dissipating electrical power. To minimize power consumption, only the spike signals which are the essential events despite firing rarely are extracted and preserved. The neural signal recording is the first step to move forward to the brain-computer interfaces that will be dominant interaction in future.
 
Speaker Bio:
Seong-Jin Kim received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Korea, in 2001. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 2003 and 2008, respectively.
From 2008 to 2012, he was a research staff member at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) in Yongin, Korea, where he engaged in the development of CMOS imager for real-time acquisition of 3-D images. From 2012 to 2015, he worked for Institute of Microelectronics (IME), A*STAR in Singapore, where he was involved in the design of analog-mixed signal circuits for various sensing systems. In 2015, he joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in South Korea as an Assistant Professor. His current research interests include high performance imaging devices, and biomedical interface circuits and systems.