TDK Corp. has made available the Chirp CH101 low power integrated ultrasonic time-of-flight (ToF) range sensor platform that includes the CH101 microelectromechancial system (MEMS) sensor, sensor modules and developer kits.
The ultrasonic sensor comes in a 3.5 mm x 3.5 mm package that combines a MEMS ultrasonic transducer with digital signal processor (DSP) on a low-power mixed-signal application specific integrated circuit (ASIC).
TDK said this is the first commercially available MEMS-based ToF sensor, which is immune to lighting conditions and target composition/color, has a configurable field of view (FoV) and a flexible DSP capable of handing the ultrasonic signal processing algorithms.
The MEMS sensor can be used for range-finding, presence/proximity sensing, object-detection/avoidance, material composition and wearables to enable social distancing and contactless tracing to help during COVID-19 and other scenarios, TDK said. These features could be used in applications such as augmented and virtual reality, robotics, mobile and computing devices and remote-sensing nodes as well as home and building automation.
