STMicroelectronics VL53L5CX FlightSense multi-zone time-of-flight sensor

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STMicroelectronics has announced the VL53L5CX, a FlightSense multi-zone time-of-flight sensor for general-purpose applications that brings sophisticated distance sensing to the full spectrum of consumer and industrial products.

The sensor provides up to 64 sensing zones with multi-target detection, distance measurement up to 4 m in each zone and a wide square-edged field of view with 63° diagonal. The sensor is suited to gesture recognition, complex scene analysis including 3D room mapping for robotics, storage-tank-level monitoring to assist in inventory management, liquid-level control and waste-bin-level monitoring to enable smart refuse collection for enhanced efficiency.

By supporting gesture recognition and automatic human-presence detection, the sensor enables safe, touch-free operation with power saving when used for waking up publicly accessible equipment such as self-service payment terminals, as well as consumer products and domestic appliances. Featuring ST’s histogram processing, which reduces the impact of cover-glass crosstalk, the sensor can be easily integrated and hidden behind various types of front panels. The innovative motion-indicator feature allows the sensor to detect if the target has moved or not.

The number of sensing arrays is programmable and the sensor can provide up to 60 fps in 16-zone (4x4) mode for fast-ranging mode. With simple software configuration to reach high resolution of 8x8 zones, it can also assist keystone correction for video projectors and provide a mini depth-map for augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications.

The sensor contains a low-power microcontroller and is capable of autonomous operation for power-saving applications. It comes in a fully integrated 6.4 x 3 x 1.5 mm module that contains an infrared VCSEL (vertical-cavity surface-emission laser) emitter and a receiver with embedded SPADs (single-photon avalanche diodes) and histogram based ToF processing engine.

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