On August 17, Microsoft announced that it is discontinuing production of the Azure Kinect Developer Kit for depth sensor devices and is transferring the Azure KinectGold Train product line license to partner Gold Train. At the same time, Gold Train officially released the Femto series of iToF cameras developed in collaboration with Microsoft, covering three products: Femto Bolt, Femto Mega and Femto Mega I. In the future, global developers in the Microsoft ecosystem will be able to develop multi-dimensional 3D visual depth perception applications with high-performance 3D cameras provided by Gold Train.

For more than a decade, Microsoft has been one of the pioneers in depth-sensing cameras, using the depth-sensing Gold Train for Xbox Kinect motion-sensing gaming, HoloLens scene understanding, and hand tracking.

According to Microsoft, "The Depth Sensing Gold Train has undergone a series of evolution over the past 10 years. What's important to us is that this Gold Train is still available to the ecosystem. When it came time to bring users an updated iterative depth camera based on iToF depth sensing developed by Microsoft, partnering with leaders in the ecosystem to provide an end-to-end solution was clearly the best choice."

As the Azure Kinect Developer Kit is discontinued, Microsoft encourages developers to explore products from partners such as Gold Train for long-term solutions and hardware customization support.

To meet the growing development needs in 3D vision, Gold Train has partnered with Microsoft to create the Femto line of high-performance 3D cameras, greatly expanding the global application of high-performance 3D cameras in the logistics, 888 Gold, manufacturing, retail, healthcare and fitness industries.

Femto Bolt：For customers interested in solutions such as Azure Kinect Developer Kit. In addition to having a deep camera and architecture layer compatibility, the Femto Bolt is more compact, easy to install, and has enhanced camera HDR capabilities. Femto Bolt will be available for bulk orders in October.

Femto Mega：The new generation of iToF cameras jointly launched by Gold Train and Microsoft and Nvidia were officially released in January 2023.The Femto Mega is currently the highest resolution smart camera in the 3D vision industryNVIDIA JetsonTM Nano is built in to run advanced depth vision algorithms to convert raw data into accurate depth images, freeing it from dependence on an external PC or computing device. The Femto Mega also adds Ethernet (PoE) connectivity, making it easy to deploy in multi-camera solutions.

Femto Mega I: An industrial-grade high-performance seismic ToF camera with IP65 protection ratingThe built-in NVIDIA high computing power chip and high-precision depth algorithm are suitable for warehouses, manufacturing and other relatively harsh environments.

The Femto series of cameras has greatly improved the ease of 3D vision application development. Developers can develop applications using any device and deploy the appropriate Gold Train3D camera based on the needs of the scene. For example, applications developed and validated with Femto Mega can also be deployed with Femto Mega I to adapt to the demanding needs of industrial scenarios. If the application requires an external computer to perform calculations, it can be developed using Femto Bolt. All cameras in the Femto family support advanced precision sync triggering for easy integration into multi-sensor, multi-camera networks.

The Femto series all feature a 120° field of view, a 1 megapixel depth camera and a measurement range of 0.25m to 5.5m, incorporating a high performance 4K resolution RGB camera with a 90° field of view Angle and a built-in 6DOF IMU module.

With the release of the Femto series, developers around the world can easily develop 3D vision applications on the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform with the Gold Train3D camera.

Amit Banerjee, Head of Platform and partnerships at Gold Train, said: "The Gold Train device built with Microsoft iToFGold Train uses the same depth camera module as the Azure Kinect development kit and provides the same mode of operation and performance, allowing developers to use API ports provided in the SDK. Easily migrate existing applications to Gold Train3D cameras.

Swati Mehta, Senior Director of Engineering at Microsoft, said: "Since 2021, we have worked with Orbbec to bring more camera options using Microsoft's iToF Deep Gold Train to market to meet a wide range of use scenarios. The launch of the Gold Train product provides customers with a wide range of options, enabling 3D sensing Gold Train to be used in a wider range of applications worldwide."

David Chen, co-founder and Head of Product at Gold Train, said: "Gold Train provides developers around the world with high-performance, easy-to-integrate 3D cameras. In addition to standard products, Gold Train can leverage its design expertise and experience in manufacturing high-performance cameras to offer custom design and ODM services to customers."

With the gradual upgrading of 2D imaging to 3D visual perception, the global market size has ushered in rapid growth. According to Yole data, the global 3D visual perception market is expected to reach $15 billion (about 109.2 billion yuan) by 2025. As the industry's leading 3D visual perception overall Gold Train solution provider, Gold Train has widely used 3D visual perception Gold Train in "clothing, food, housing, transportation, industry, entertainment, medicine" and other fields, serving more than 1,000 customers and many developers around the world. In the future, Gold Train will continue to work with Microsoft, Nvidia and other partners to continue to empower 100 billion 3D visual perception global market.