Smart Cities

Infineon presents hybrid Time of Flight technology for next-generation smart robots

Wed, Jan 31, 2024

In collaboration with device manufacturer OMS and pmdtechnologies, an expert in Time of Flight (ToF) technology, Infineon has developed a new high-resolution camera solution that enables enhanced depth sensing and 3D scene understanding for next-generation smart consumer robots. The new hybrid Time of Flight (hToF) solution combines two depth sensing concepts and helps significantly reduce maintenance effort and costs for smart robots.

Infineon’s REAL3 flexible ToF imager technology enables the combination of established high-resolution iToF flood illumination and dToF long-range spot illumination in a single hybrid Time of Flight camera. For many years now, this high-resolution technology has been used to see the smallest objects in the path of the robot and navigate around them. Adding precise long-range spot data now also allows creation of an accurate 3D map of the surrounding area for intelligent path planning experiences even in challenging light conditions of bright sunlight or darkness that empower the next-generation robot vacuum cleaner.

The new solution reduces the height of robot vacuum cleaners by 20-30 percent, fully replacing the top-mounted LDS (Laser Distance Scanner) making it possible to clean even under furniture with low clearance. Measuring only 31x16x8 mm, the hybrid ToF camera requires much less space for improved mapping and obstacle avoidance functionality. Making multiple sensors redundant, hybrid ToF reduces system costs as well as operation costs, since there are no moving parts that wear out over time.

The solution serves customers with a simplified and user-friendly approach to implementation. The compact hybrid ToF solution is versatile and robust and aligns well with the evolving needs of mobile consumer robot devices in various industries such as robot vacuum cleaners, commercial robots, air-purifiers and size measurement.

https://www.infineon.com

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Renesas brings industry-leading performance of RA8 series MCUs to motor control applications

Tue, Jan 30, 2024

Renesas has introduced the RA8T1 microcontroller (MCU) group based on the Arm® Cortex®-M85 processor. RA8T1 devices address real-time control of motors, power supplies and other products commonly used in industrial and building automation, as well as smart homes.

The RA8T1 group is the third in Renesas’ RA8 Series, all of which deliver breakthrough performance of 6.39 CoreMark/MHz1. All RA8 MCUs take advantage of the high performance of the Arm Cortex-M85 processor and Arm’s Helium technology that provides up to a 4X performance boost for digital signal processor (DSP) and machine learning (ML) implementations over the Cortex-M7 core. This added performance in RA8T1 devices can be used for AI functions that can predict maintenance requirements for motors, reducing costly downtime.

The new RA8T1 devices include advanced PWM timing features such as 3-phase complementary output, 0% and 100% duty output capability, a double-buffer compare match register, and five phase counting modes. Analog capabilities of the new MCUs include 12-bit ADCs, 12-bit DACs and high-speed comparators used in voltage and current measurement and over-current protection. RA8T1 MCUs also offer multiple communications functions, including SCI, SPI, I2C/I3C, CAN/CAN-FD, Ethernet, and USB-FS. The new group also provides port output shutdown capability when an anomaly is detected, an important safety feature in motor control. These capabilities combined with the advanced timers and Renesas’ power management expertise, enable customers to build comprehensive, low-power motor control solutions.

All RA8 devices also offer advanced security including Arm TrustZone® technology, Renesas Security IP (RSIP-E51A), Secure Boot with first stage bootloader in immutable storage, and Pointer Authentication and Branch Target Identification (PACBTI) security extension.

The new RA8T1 Group MCUs are supported by Renesas’ Flexible Software Package (FSP). The FSP enables faster application development by providing all the infrastructure software needed, including multiple RTOS, BSP, peripheral drivers, middleware, connectivity, networking, and security stacks as well as reference software to build complex AI, motor control and cloud solutions. It allows customers to integrate their own legacy code and choice of RTOS with FSP, thus providing full flexibility in application development. Using the FSP will ease migration of existing designs to the new RA8 Series devices.

The RA8T1 Group MCUs are available now, along with the FSP software. The new MCUs are supported in Renesas’ Flexible Motor Control development kit that enables easy evaluation of motor control using permanent magnet synchronous motors (brushless DC motors), and the Renesas Motor Workbench development tool. This development kit offers a common design platform with numerous Renesas motor control MCUs from the RA and RX families, enabling migration of IP across numerous devices.

https://www.renesas.com/RA8T1

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Advantech Dual-Band Industrial Wi-Fi I/O Module redefines data acquisition efficiency

Tue, Jan 30, 2024

Advantech has introduced the new WISE-4250 dual band based Industrial Wi-Fi I/O Module. The WISE-4250 features interchangeable I/O and sensors integrated with IoT data acquisition, processing and publishing. Data can be sent directly from Edge to Cloud with higher security and no loss functions. All Wi-Fi channels can be flexibly connected with a smart roaming function. Users can directly configure products with devices via a HTML5 based web page user interface. Products support RESTful API in JSON format for any IoT integration.

The WISE-4250 supports 2.4/5GHz dual band concurrently, enabling leverage of both frequencies at the same time, reducing wireless interference against device data transmission delay. Diverse I/O modules support a wide range of data acquisition. WISE-4250 provides a number of embedded drivers which can easily plug-and-play with wireless modules. The data logger provides data resume functions ensuring zero data loss during on-line, off-line and power off situations. Users can easily find real data with RTC time stamps.

Secure Edge-to-Cloud AES encrypted security is built-in with 802.1x, up to WPA3 Personal and Enterprise, and effortlessly configurable via P2P (peer to peer) functions with mobile devices. Push data to SCADA, the cloud, or private servers while integrating IoT through RESTful web APIs or diverse protocols.

The WISE-4250 features and industrial-Grade design suitable for use in harsh environments. The device will operate over wide temperature and humidity ranges and provides voltage endurance. Diverse mounting methods and fast roaming simplify implementation in a wide variety of applications.

http://www.advantech.com

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Siretta Quartz-Gold-5G routers support rapid data transfer for industrial IoT applications

Mon, Jan 29, 2024

Mouser Electronics is now stocking the Quartz-Gold-5G industrial routers from Siretta. Designed to transfer large amounts of data via the 5G NR cellular network, the QUARTZ-GOLD-5G routers are high-speed dual-port gigabit Ethernet industrial routers capable of reaching 2.4 Gbps download and 900 Mbps upload speeds. The QUARTZ-GOLD-5G routers are an ideal choice for the management of remote systems and communication channels, supporting a range of industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications, including security, renewable energy, traffic control, and environmental monitoring.

The Quartz-Gold-5G Routers feature a robust, compact design, as well as fallback options to 4G/LTE and 3G/UMTS communication should 5G NR be unavailable. The router’s software supports a broad range of high-end VPN security protocols, allowing the router to be safely deployed in commercial and industrial environments. The Quartz-Gold-5G router also offers an RS232 interface that may be used to connect serial ports on products such as door access controllers and alarm panels to the Internet. The router allows connected equipment to directly interrogate the connection status, signal strength and network parameters, allowing remote systems to run autonomously in the field.

The Quartz-Gold-5G routers are based on a MediaTek 880MHz MIPS dual-core processor with 256 Mbytes flash and 2 Gbytes of DDR3 RAM running on a Linux-based operating system. The cellular capabilities of the routers are powered by the Quectel RM500QAE module, which uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 5G modem.

https://www.mouser.com/new/siretta/siretta-quartz-gold-5g-routers/.

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