Time-of-Flight, or ToF devices use pulses of infrared laser light to illuminate the subject and measure the time it takes for the reflected light to reach the image sensor to determine depth information. Indirect Time-of-Flight, or iToF cameras are a variation of ToF cameras. While ToF cameras directly measure the time it takes for the emitted light to be reflected back to the camera, indirect ToF cameras send out continuously modulated pulses of light, and then measure the phase shift of the reflected light to calculate the distance to an object.

Because of their ability to sense depth and distance accurately, ToF cameras are used in a variety of machine vision and embedded systems applications. These include applications like industrial robotics, where ToF cameras can be used instead of LiDAR to help robots navigate autonomously. Other applications of ToF cameras include logistics, where they are used to allow automated forklifts to accurately pick up pallets and package sorting, where ToF cameras can quickly sense and sort package dimensions.

ToF cameras are also finding their way into the mobility and transport sectors, where they are used for attention tracking and gesture recognition, and in retail automation, where they are used for people counting and seamless checkout systems.

FRAMOS’s FSM-IMX570 Devkit has been developed to address some of the difficulties vision system engineers face when developing camera systems with emerging technologies. These include the fact that creating a working camera requires integrating multiple components that aren’t always easy to interface to accessible platforms for processing and calibrating the raw data from the sensor. Since ToF is an emerging technology, there isn’t a lot of documentation available for some components, and what little there is often proprietary.

The development kit allows engineers to get a working device system up and running quickly. It allows them to visualize depth data as false color video, or as a 3D point cloud stream. Besides the preprocessed and corrected depth data, the FSM-IMX570 Devkit also allows users access to the raw pixel data from the image sensor, for the purpose of development and benchmark with own processing pipelines.

FRAMOS can customize all elements of the development kit, pouring it into the perfect fit for performance and producibility. Starting from the form, size and layout of the printed circuit boards, over driver porting and tuning, to adaption of the whole optics and illumination system for the specific application and operating distances. The goal is to provide a complete solution from one hand, relieving customers from the duties and risks managing technology and supply chain quality when moving into volume.

The FSM-IMX570 Devkit includes a FRAMOS sensor module board, with the Sony IMX570 sensor; a laser illumination board; a sensor adaptor board, to provide synchronization with the laser illumination and on-board depth processing, and a FRAMOS processor board adapter, to provide connectivity to the NVIDIA Jetson family of embedded computers, including the Jetson Xavier™ and Jetson Orin™ platforms.

FRAMOS
https://www.framos.com/en/products/fsm-imx570-development-kit-for-jetson-agx-orin-xavier-26926