ESPROS TOF Range Finder

The new epc611 from ESPROS is a general-purpose, monolithic, fully integrated photoelectric CMOS device for optical distance measurements and object detection. The chip offers an operating range up to 30m and a resolution in the millimetre range. Applications include people and object counting sensors, drone altimeters, automatic vehicle guidance, door opening, machine control and safeguard sensors, MMI gesture control, volumetric mapping of objects and SLAM data acquisition in mobile robots. The working principle of the epc611 is based on 3D TOF measurement ie the elapsed time-of-flight (TOF) of a photon (modulated light) emitted by the illumination and reflected back by the object to the photosensitive receiver. The receiver measures the phase shift between the emitted and received signal which is proportional to the distance.. The system-on-chip (SOC) contains: -A full data acquisition path including the modulation driver for LEDs or laser diodes, the photo-receiver with an 8×8 pixel TOF CCD array, the signal conditioning, the A/D converter and the basic signal processing -An on-chip controller managing data acquisition and data communication -An SPI interface for the command and data communication -A supply-voltage power management unit Various modes allow operation of the chip as a very fast one-pixel range-finder chip, as a fast one-pixel range-finder chip with low distance noise, or as 8 x 8 TOF imager chip. Together with a microprocessor and a few external components, a fully functional TOF range-finder or a TOF camera can be built which measures the object distance individually and simultaneously per pixel. The very high photosensitivity allows operating ranges up to several metres and an accuracy down to a centimetre depending on the lens and the illumination power.