Jeff Gray, VP of Sales and Marketing says: "I believe we have truly opened the door for our customers to simply make the right decision to use gesture sensors in their mobile devices without the concern of significant battery drain, caused by LED based gesture sensors. Our customer have long since told us that the biggest concern with gesture was power consumption based on their test of a number of LED based solution, this has cause a delay in adopting gesture technology, they further state that they would not be able to offer the consumer true gesture functionality because of this. Well today that all changes thanks to Pyreos new gesture family of products. The ability to offer significantly low power features like always on and wake on motion, will at last give the consumer a true touchless experience."
The company announces a new funding round of $4M, led by Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Seraphim Capital, Siemens Technology Accelerator and the Scottish Investment Bank (SIB).
A Youtube video explains Pyreos' approach:
A year-old company presentation emphasizes the strong points of the technology:
note company name is Pyreos not Pireus (as in pyroelectric effect)
ReplyDeletefor such kind of applications, no need of PIR sensing...
ReplyDeleteThermal signal can not pass through glass, so integration into apparatus could be a big problem.
ReplyDeleteCorning's Gorilla Glass 3 passes >90% of light from 400nm to more than 2500nm.
DeleteDoes anyone know what wavelengths these devices can detect?
Generally pyroelectric detectors measure the temperature rise of the detector material due to heating from incoming photons. So, they don't have the classic band-gap behavior in their absorption spectra. I believe they are mostly used for 3-5 and 8-12 um bands due to atmospheric transmission windows.
DeleteI thought these type of IR sensors used large pixel sizes and had poor resolution --> not so good for accurate gesture recognition?
ReplyDeleteThey would like just to show one of the possible applications... like ATMEL fingerprint sensor by using the same principle.
ReplyDeleteMotion detectors used to turn on lights when someone enters a room work on the same principle. Typically, the detectors (thermopiles, in this case) have only two elements. Clever segmented optics are used to generate a detectable pattern as someone moves across the field of view. The optics are made of one of the plastics that will transmit in the thermal infrared.
ReplyDelete