Infineon launched the world's first high-resolution vehicle 3D image sensor meeting ISO26262 standard

     The 3D depth sensor plays an important role in the car cabin monitoring system, helping to create an innovative car intelligent cabin, supporting the seamless access of new services, and improving passive safety. They are critical to meeting regulatory requirements and NCAP safety rating requirements, as well as achieving the vision of autonomous driving. In view of this, Infineon Technology Co., Ltd. has developed the second generation of vehicle REAL3 image sensor in cooperation with PMD, which focuses on the field of 3D ToF (time of flight) system. The sensor conforms to ISO26262 standard and has higher resolution.

     Christian Herzum, vice president of Infineon's 3D sensing business, said: "Infineon has always been in the leading position in the field of 3D sensors for mobile consumer terminals. With this advantage, we have expanded the application range of 3D sensors to the automotive field, providing high-resolution image sensors for the automotive industry. This product can achieve the same functions as the mobile consumer terminals in the automobile, while always meeting the vehicle specification standards, and even improving passive safety. For example, reliable and safe face Identification, allowing seamless access to any service requiring identity authentication, such as payment, battery charging or access to private data. "

     In addition, this 3D image sensor also enables the on-board camera to meet various requirements of driver status monitoring, and accurately judge whether drivers have dangerous driving behaviors such as distraction and fatigue. In this way, only one ToF camera is needed to build a driver status monitoring system that can safely conduct 3D face recognition.

     Bernd Buxbaum, CEO of Biotech, said: "We have always been committed to improving the robustness of 3D image sensors developed based on Biotech's ToF technology, so as to ensure that they are not affected by external factors such as sunlight and other interfering light sources. Therefore, even under bad conditions, the new image sensors can show excellent performance."

     The sensor is 9 x 9 mm ² Plastic BGA (ball grid array) packaging, using a tiny light sensitive area of only 4 mm, achieves a VGA system resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. Thanks to this, the car camera in the car application can also be made as small as the smartphone camera. REAL3 sensor has high resolution, so it is suitable for wide field of view camera applications, such as the front passenger omni-directional monitoring system. Using the 3D body model generated from this, the body shape and weight of the passengers can be accurately estimated, and the highly accurate position data of the passengers and seats can be obtained, thus providing key information for the deployment and restraint system of the intelligent airbag. This single chip solution is not only compact, but also conforms to AEC-Q100 Grade 2 standard. It is the first solution developed according to ISO26262 (ASIL-B) standard.

     In addition to safety critical applications, 3D data can also be used to achieve body comfort functions, such as gesture control, or interior lighting systems that can intuitively sense the actions of passengers and automatically adjust lights. In addition, the image sensor can also be used in the environment perception scene in the car like the Flash laser radar. In terms of security, it is also an ideal choice for mobile robots, unmanned aerial vehicles and other similar autonomous control applications. Because in these application scenarios, reliability and security are necessary to protect operators.