PixArt's Sensing Technologies – EE Times
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Sensors can play vital roles in leading-edge automotive designs to simulate human senses, including seeing, feeling, and touching perceptions, allowing the vehicle to be more intelligent. The rapid development of smart vehicle gives many global automotive OEMs and suppliers the impetus to look for new sensor technologies and innovatively apply them in various applications. Since 2020, chip shortage has lingered even into 2023; the automotive industry faced an unstable semiconductor constraints crisis that caused a supply-chain shutdown and a decline in market sales. The growing risk awareness makes automotive OEMs and suppliers rethink their supply-chain strategies and restructure a next-generation platform that extends to their semiconductor partners. The automaker and their suppliers have now collaborated with their semiconductor partners to shape a new game rule in sensor supply, benefiting both the automotive and semiconductor industries.
PixArt is a leading CMOS image sensor provider offering a broad selection of optical image sensors and image analytic technologies in pace with today’s complex human-machine interface applications – with expertise in utilizing CMOS image sensors as the visual means for all image analytics built into an SoC. To cater to the diversified sensor application demands, more sensing technologies such as capacitive touch and MEMS were introduced and fostered the emerging applications of sensor fusion. Our ability to provide a solution combining the sensors with proprietary algorithms and optomechanical packaging, elevates PixArt as an excellent partner for all your sensing application needs. Taking our past experiences in various sensor design development and manufacturing in the semiconductor as the backbone of our core competencies, PixArt is further fulfilling the sensor needs in the automotive industry. To mitigate the new restructuring supply chain of semiconductors for the automotive market, PixArt has been closely collaborating with automotive qualified top-tier foundries, test houses, and packaging and optics manufacturers. This close partnership ensures a stable sensor supply and further reinforces product quality.
Reliability is the number one priority in the automotive industry. With the long-term deployment of automotive sensing applications, the PixArt Group not only has its automotive products conformed to the reliability requirements of the automotive components standard AEC-Q100 but has also passed ISO9001:2015 certification and built an automotive quality management system according to VDA 6.2 3rd Edition “QM System Audit – Special Requirements for Service Organizations in the Automotive Industry” and The Applicability Clauses of IATF Automotive Industry Quality Management System along with the application of the five core tools. Having passed the third-party audit conducted by TUV NORD, PixArt has obtained ISO 9001:2015 certification and the Certificate of Conformance of the relevant quality management system. The PixArt Group is committed to meeting the requirements of quality management system certification for the automotive industry and providing our customers with highly stable, safe, and top-quality automotive products and services.
PixArt has set long-term development in sensing technologies for automotive applications in a unique position to serve global customers. Over the years, we have had the great experience to partner with Tier-1 customers for the earlier development of a new generation smart cockpit. With the trust of our customers, we are honored to have many successful proven records with global players listed in the top 5 automakers and many Tier-1 giants.
PixArt sustains a culture of continuous improvement and solid discipline for pursuing the highest quality products we make. We are committed and willing to invest in the training and development of employees and build effective working methods and processes to achieve the best quality and reliable products, technologies, and services for our customers worldwide. Everyone in PixArt who has completed the training in automotive-related QMS and standard requirements knows that quality is the key to PixArt’s automotive grade sensors.
Nowadays, smart cabin systems of vehicles provide an immersive experience with intelligent sensing to monitor and assist the interaction of drivers, passengers, and others. We are devoted to developing novel technologies to bridge the human-machine interface barrier by leveraging our expertise in CMOS image sensors and related imaging applications. We have extensive experience in mixed-signal image processing design, proprietary algorithm engines, and systems development to provide a complete system module.
The image below shows a part of our products that can be applied in an automotive to improve the drivers’ in-cabin experience.
The conventional controllers such as key switches, knobs, and dials require drivers to temporarily move their eyesight away from the road. As the cabin system becomes more sophisticated, the time for the driver to stare at the controller may significantly increase, causing a higher risk in road safety. PixArt’s Gesture Recognition Control technology offers an intuitive, intelligent, safe gesture control option that allows drivers to operate in-cabin systems (e.g. sunroof, ambient-light control) or infotainment systems with the least distraction. With a simple learning curve, drivers could quickly adapt to operate the system with their fingers and hand movements while keeping their eyes and attention to the road.
All PixArt’s Gesture products are infra-red based imaging technology to ensure that the system maintains the consistent and reliable performance of gesture recognition under all lighting conditions, even in an entirely dark environment. With PixArt’s expertise in low-power design architecture, our Gesture products are best optimized for low-power consumption to operate at full functional capabilities even with its in-built ambient light cancellation.
PixArt offers 2 types of Gesture Recognition products:
The Single Object Gesture Recognition products come in a highly integrated reflowable small form factor SMD module that contains a CMOS gesture sensor SoC with the in-built algorithms, a LED light source, and a lens. It can recognize when a gesture begins, track its movement, insert interruption signals in between gestures, and continuously wrap up every completed gesture that is to be analyzed by the advanced algorithms. It supports a high report rate of up to 240Hz to directly output up to 10 types of pre-defined hand gestures (gesture-mode) or single finger movement (cursor-mode), creating flexibility for further custom development. The Single Object Gesture Recognition module provides reliable quality with high performance and cost savings during the design and production stages. The renowned PAJ7635U2 is the Single Object Gesture Recognition module compliant with AEC-Q100 Grade 3. The shift to touchless features using this gesture sensor module to detect hand motions and disregard other movements in the dash is face-lifting to contemporary cockpit design.
The Multi-Object Gesture Recognition solution combines a CMOS gesture sensor and a standalone ISP SoC with full algorithmic support, delivers a total solution to enhance for the recognition of more sophisticated gestures in simplifying complex user scenarios and for custom situation. The solution recognizes more pre-defined hand movements and detects sophisticated multi-finger gestures to output real-time detection data in regard to the objects’ position, size and brightness.
PixArt provides complete module of Multi-Object Gesture that has qualified by ISO16750 standard that ensures for environmental conditions and E/E equipment. (Note: ISO16750 standard: Road vehicles—Environmental conditions and electrical testing for electrical and electronic equipment)
As a sophisticated set of in-vehicle infotainment systems is essential to complete the interior appearance of premium cars, having a multi-function steering wheel or navigation pad control panel would undoubtedly help to raise the profile in the competition. Optical Finger Navigation (OFN) is a sensor SoC integrated with a CMOS Optical Sensor, ISP (Image Signal Processing), and Digital Signal Processing (DSP). It uses PixArt’s propriety navigation algorithm based on OFNavi™ to provide relative tracking for the displacement and speed of finger movement. The OFN enables intelligent and intuitional interior sensing for the vehicle HMI, offering a user interface with outstanding performance and a friendly experience that meets end-user expectations.
The OFN comes in a tiny FPC module, an excellent offer for space-constraint design to fit onto the steering wheel for free cursor-tracking control or multi-direction navigation as well as touch, single-click, and double-click detection. Drivers could toggle between the display menu easily to control the infotainment system while safely keeping their hands on the steering wheel. The OFN PAW302X series are fully qualified for AEC-Q100 and ISO16750 to fulfill the automotive requirements. We also offer the discrete sensor package for adoption into custom designs that fit into their fancy stylish ID mechanism as a one-piece surface switch panel.
The powerful CMOS image sensors (CIS) capture static images or live videos that allow the driver to see the vehicle’s surroundings clearly through the “third eye” from the display screen of the vehicle’s infotainment system. Today, more CIS are deployed and installed all around the car to provide not only a camera-like display to the driver but to work as an inevitable vision sensing in the self-parking systems. With the years of vast experiences and key competencies in CMOS imaging technologies, PixArt are transforming the conventional CIS with highly integrated design and ultra-low power architecture to realize the Smart CIS. The Smart CIS could offload the huge processing power of the complex computation from the external processor to have the built-in intelligences operate at the sensor level. This can effectively reduce the subsequent reliance on the processor and memory to achieve power-saving.
Our HMI solutions are in the highly integrated customizable module with the propriety on-chip algorithm in the sensor, which can output results to MCU directly. Being your valuable partner, delivering trustworthy sensing solutions and bringing cost savings in design, validation, and production, as well as safeguarding high quality and reliability in the supply assurance.
For more information, please get in touch with your PixArt local sales or contact us at https://www.pixart.com
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