A microchip fab deep inside the Gonzen massif
“The Switzerland you can’t see”, the excellent report by RSI (Radiotelevisione svizzera di lingua italiana), featuring the test gallery Hagerbach and ESPROS Photonics, both built inside the Gonzen massif, in Canton St. Gallen.
Semiconductor manufacturing requires a special environment where vibrations are minimized. Beat De Coi, CEO and founder of ESPROS, in 2009 had a cavern 100 m deep dug into the mountain, an ideal environment for the company’s current production and future expansion.
The performance of the human eye is awesome. It has a fantastic resolution, hence small objects can bee seen at long distances. It works very well in a huge brightness dynamic range and it is able to estimate distance. This in a system of two eyes and a dedicated computer system – the human vision system (HVS). There are many aspects of the HVS which outperforms any LiDAR system. However, the perfomance is based on a very clever designed system. Why not to use the human eye and the human vision system as an example for future LiDAR systems?
Beat De Coi is talking about latest developments of ToF imagers from ESPROS.
The TOFcam-635 visualizer’s extended functionality accelerates the implementing of TOFcameras into a specific application. Scope functions and 3D point cloud additionally to common distance and amplitude values simplifies optimizing the camera parameters.
The new streaming feature allows recording of 3D TOF data from TOFcam-660. Depending on lens distortion and camera calibration the GUI transforms the distance data to x-y-z point clouds. The 3D point cloud viewer allows to zoom in and out, turn the scenery around its axis or display from front, side or top.
Ambient light compensation is one of the key issues for using 3D time of flight cameras in outdoor applications. The ESPROS epc6xx family impresses by its performance even under full sunlight. This thanks to its unique pixel design and chip architecture. The video sequence shows the capability of an epc660 based TOFcam-660 with direct sunlight into the receiver lens but full sunlight on a high reflective target as well.
This presentation explains the basic physical and photo-biological problems and limitations of LiDAR sensing and imaging. It also presents the technology behind the implementation of a product which is in a sweet spot of LiDAR sensing. This in terms of longest possible operating range at full sunlight on the target.
Speaker: Beat De Coi – Founder and CEO, ESPROS Photonics Corporation
Our TOFcam 660-NF is able to capture real-time 3D data in a range of up to 65m with a 31° horizontal x 24° vertical field of view. Due to the active NIR illumination of all of our TOFcam 660 models the camera operates with same performance at daylight or in total darkness. Even objects with very low reflectivity have been visualized and detected within incredible distance. For better orientation the in-line placed reflectors mark a 10m distance each.
This video shows you a typical scenery where people meet in an office, on a booth or any other meeting place. The sequence was captured with our brand new TOF>cam 660-WF with a 108° horizontal and 77° vertical field of view. The camera was operated in a distance range of about 0.5 to 9m and illustrates the distance data with a perspectific point cloud visualization tool. Due to the real 3D information the point-cloud can be calculated and simulated from points of view different to the one of the camera.
Our TOF imager chip epc660 gives you huge capabilities in time of flight imaging. The corresponding evaluation kit contains an extensive package of software tools. Various standard configurations allows you a fast and easy start for applications such as face recognition e.g.