The American’s MAX25405 infrared sensors allow gesture recognition in the passenger compartment of a car at a cost ten times lower than that of time-of-flight (ToF) sensors and are intended as an alternative to voice recognition in the car. automobile.
As the safety of people on board does not suffer from any compromise in the automotive sector, the equipment manufacturers in the sector are constantly working to find solutions allowing, for example, the driver to be able to control his infotainment system without leaving the road of the vehicles. eyes.
While voice recognition is a worthy solution, Maxim Integrated also offers to explore the track of gesture recognition using dedicated infrared sensors, and more particularly its latest generation of optical sensors. The MAX25405 sensors are indeed capable of recognizing a larger panel of hand gestures (sweeping the hand to the right and left, up and down, click in a vacuum or “air-click”, rotation of a finger or one hand, multizone proximity detection, etc.) and at a greater distance (40 cm instead of 20 cm) than what the previous models of the American were capable of. But above all, the MAX25405 do the job in a footprint four times more compact and at a cost ten times less than time-of-flight sensors (ToF, time of flight), if Maxim is to be believed.
“This affordable gesture detection feature brings real added value to low and mid-range cars, while giving passengers the luxury of touchless gesture control.”, argues Szu-Kang Hsien, Director of the Automotive Division of Maxim Integrated.
Encapsulated in a 20-pin 4x4x1.35mm miniature optical QFN package with two serial I interfaces2C (400kHz) and SPI (6MHz), the MAX25405 integrates four discrete LEDs and their driver, a matrix of 6 x 10 infrared photodiodes, as well as a glass lens to increase the sensitivity and the signal-to-noise ratio of the whole. . However, the use of the data collected requires the use of an external low cost and low consumption microcontroller, such as the MAX32630.
Capable of operating from -40 to + 85 ° C and consuming only 1 mA at 3.3 V, the MAX25405 is AEC-Q100 qualified. It can however be used in applications other than the automobile, in particular in home automation or in certain industrial applications (human-machine interfaces for example).
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