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Chinese team develops intelligent vision sensor that turns light signals into AI-ready tokens, reducing use of energy_我的网站
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A Chinese research team from Nanjing University has developed a new ultra-low-power intelligent vision sensor chip, dubbed "LightTok," that can convert light signals into tokens within the sensor, significantly reducing the high energy consumption caused by frequent transfers of massive amounts of redundant data, the principal investigator told the Global Times.
According to a release from the Institute of Brain-Inspired Intelligence of Nanjing University, tokens generated by the LightTok chip can be directly fed into a Transformer encoder for image recognition.
"Our design idea was to move token generation onto the sensor itself, allowing the chip to directly produce tokens that AI models can process once light reaches the sensor," Miao Feng, director of the Institute of Brain-Inspired Intelligence at Nanjing University, told the Global Times on Thursday. "These tokens contain complete image information."
Physical AI refers to intelligent systems capable of autonomously perceiving, reasoning, acting and receiving feedback in the real world, representing a key pathway for AI to move from the digital realm into the physical world. Vision-based physical AI systems powered by large AI models need to convert visual information from real-world environments into tokens that can be processed by AI models before feeding these tokens into Transformers for subsequent tasks.
In traditional visual perception pipelines, light signals must go through multiple stages, including image sensing, analog-to-digital conversion, data buffering and transfer, digital image patching and embedding, before being transformed into tokens that AI models can process. The frequent transfer of massive amounts of redundant data has resulted in high energy consumption at the edge, according to a report by Science and Technology Daily.
The LightTok chip directly addresses a key challenge in physical AI hardware: how to efficiently acquire and tokenize visual information from the physical world with low energy consumption, Miao said.
The LightTok chip consists of a photosensitive memory array and peripheral circuits. The team built the array based on single-layer molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) floating-gate phototransistors, with each pixel capable of sensing light, storing information and performing analog computing. By processing optical information directly within the chip, the device can convert captured visual signals into tokens for AI models, according to the research team.
The current LightTok prototype has a resolution of 32×32 pixels, or 1,024 photosensitive pixels, which is still smaller than that of smartphone cameras and industrial imaging systems. However, Miao said the technology is compatible with CMOS manufacturing processes and can be scaled up. With wafer-level growth of molybdenum disulfide materials, the chip could potentially achieve a scale comparable to existing imaging devices.
Miao said the chip also draws inspiration from the information-processing mechanism of human vision. Similar to how the retina extracts key visual information before transmitting it to the brain, the chip also aims to process visual information at an early stage.
The research was conducted in collaboration with another research team from the National University of Singapore. The findings were published on Wednesday in Nature Sensors, an internationally renowned journal in the field of sensing technology, according to the release.
Potential applications for LightTok include drone systems, autonomous remote sensing and small-scale embodied AI systems, Miao said. In these scenarios, devices need to continuously detect, understand and track targets, generating massive amounts of visual data. By reducing the energy required for visual processing, the technology could extend the operating time of drones, satellites and small robots with limited power supplies, the expert said.
。 신한은행은 고금리 가계대출을 보유한 고객의 금융비용 부담을 완화하기 위해 지난해 ‘헬프업 & 밸류업(Help-up & Value-up) 프로젝트’ 의 일환으로 시행한 가계대출 금리 인하 지원을 26일부터 1년간 연장한다고 밝혔다.‘헬프업 & 밸류업 프로젝트’는 고객의 경제적 자립을 돕고(Help-up) 자산 가치를 높여(Value-up) 지속 가능한 금융생활을 지원하기 위해 지난해 신한금융그룹이 시행한 상생금융 프로젝트다.신한은행은 지난해 7월부터 1년간 9.8% 초과 금리가 적용되는 가계대출의 금리를 9.8%로 낮춰 고객의 이자 부담을 경감했다. 이번 연장을 통해 고금리 가계대출을 이용하는 고객의 금융비용 부담 완화를 이어간다.지원 대상은 2026년 7월 기준 9.8%를 초과하는 금리가 적용되는 가계대출을 보유한 고객 중 대출 잔여 만기가 3개월 이상인 고객이다. 대상 고객의 대출금리는 별도의 신청 절차 없이 9.8%로 인하된다.지원 기간은 해당 대출의 만기일까지이며, 잔여 만기가 1년을 초과하는 경우 최대 1년간 지원한다. 이번 지원 대상은 총 2만8411건, 대출잔액 기준 약 3114억원 규모로 예상된다. 지원 기간 중 대출이 연체될 경우 기존 대출이자와 연체이자를 납부해야 한다.한편, 신한은행은 21일 중저신용 고객의 금융 접근성을 높이고 이자 부담을 완화하기 위해 ‘슈퍼SOL중금리대출’을 출시했다. 외부 신용평점(NICE 또는 KCB) 하위 50% 중저신용 고객을 대상으로 1인당 최대 2000만원까지 지원하며, 자체 개발한 ‘서민 대안신용평가모형’을 적용해 사회초년생·주부 등 금융거래 이력이 상대적으로 부족한 고객까지 금융지원의 폭을 넓혔다. 연 5.5~6.9%의 고정금리를 적용받고 대출 기간은 최대 36개월이다. 정호원 기자。
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