Leopard Imaging and Lumotive have announced Sirius Max (LI-AR0234-AF0130-TX10-GMSL2-140H), a solid-state 3D LiDAR camera that combines RGB imaging with indirect time-of-flight depth sensing. Lumotive says the platform extends iToF performance "beyond 20 meters" in both indoor and outdoor environments, with 1MP depth resolution.
Conventional flood-illumination ToF systems light the whole scene at once. Sirius Max instead steers its illumination with Lumotive's TX10 programmable beam-steering transmitter, which directs where light and depth scanning land. Leopard Imaging says this improves optical efficiency, ambient light rejection, signal-to-noise ratio and long-range sensing. The design has no moving mechanical components. Depth sensing is based on the onsemi AF0130 sensor.
Scanning is defined in software, and users can set regions of interest. Apurva Jain, senior vice president of product and marketing at Lumotive, said customers can use "a single sensor platform" for SLAM, collision avoidance, object handling and navigation. Leopard Imaging's own list adds cliff detection and visual inspection. For automation engineers, the draw is folding several sensing jobs into one module instead of mounting a separate sensor for each.
The module is a fully integrated GMSL2 camera system with an ISP, embedded processing and synchronization on board. It sends synchronized RGB video, depth data and control signals over a single coaxial cable. The companies also cite enhanced dynamic range, reduced multipath and reduced saturation noise.
Bill Pu, CEO of Leopard Imaging, called Sirius Max "a major advancement in programmable optical perception systems." The companies name humanoid robotics, autonomous navigation, automotive monitoring, industrial automation and smart infrastructure as target applications, and describe the camera as optimized for real-time RGB-depth fusion.
