OMRON Corporation will release a new series of products called "Human Vision Components - Consumer model" ("HVC-C") in December 2014. This series of products integrates OMRON's proprietary face image sensing technology, "OKAO Vision"(*1), and a camera module into a single, compact unit that can send sensing results to smartphones or tablets over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth so that this information can be easily accessed by apps on those devices.

HVC-C is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and can sense 10 different characteristics (*1) of someone's condition or movement, such as facial expression, gender, age, line of sight and gestures. The HVC-C series of sensors can be fitted to all kinds of equipment and devices to be the "eyes" of the Internet of Things (IoT), working towards creating a new sensing network environment that can be an integral part of our daily life.
OMRON will make HVC-C application development information openly available from its website and will also actively provide this information to hackathons and ideathons (*2) so that application developers around the world can create new ways to use the HVC-C and promote open innovation for the IoT.

OMRON released HVC to corporations in March 2014 for supply as an integral part of residential electrical appliances and other products. With the release of HVC-C, we want a wide range of application developers and general consumers to directly use this new technology to create new value and opportunities matched to their individual lifestyles through small office appliances and components and personal use devices.

OMRON will have HVC-C on display at CEATEC JAPAN 2014 to be held October 7 (Tue.) - 11 (Sat.) at Makuhari Messe in Chiba.At OMRON's booth in the Lifestyle & Society Stage in Hall 3, we will have a working demonstration of the "Smart House". In this demonstration, we will use "Smile Training" and a combination of the HVC-C sensor and smartphone apps to automatically adjust living room lighting to perfectly match facial expression.

- Image Sensing Components to Recognize a Person's Condition and Send to Smart Phone -