In September, Fierce Electronics and Sensors converge presented the Best of Sensors Awards at the Sensors Converge 2021 Conference and Expo. The awards spotlight the year’s most transformative technologies, teams, and individuals in the sensors industry. Submissions were judged on the uniqueness of the designs, the impact of the issues they address, and the value they added to the marketplace. There were 13 Best Sensors Award recipients, one for each category of the award.
Fierce Electronics was proud to present the 2021 Best of Sensors Award in the category of Optical & Cameras to Jabil for its Jabil Omnidirectional Sensor.
When asked about the specific benefits of winning the award, Ian Blasch, Senior Director of Jabil Optics, responded:
“Industry awards, like Best of Sensors, legitimize the quality of design occurring within an organization. The benefit is a two-way street for both the winners as well as the customers seeking their services or products. By winning an award, the company is exposed to customers that may not have been aware that the company offered the products or services at the level of excellence implied by the award”.
The Jabil Omnidirectional Sensor removes the need to use multiple independent sensors for complete situational awareness on robotic devices. The field of view of conventional Time-of-Flight (ToF) cameras doesn’t compare to the immersive (270° x 60°) field of view of the Omnidirectional Sensor. This large field of view enables the seamless detection and tracking of objects in its path, both on the ground and in the air, improving both obstacle avoidance and employee safety without the need to modify a facility with magnetic tape, tags, transponders, or reflectors.
The Omnidirectional Sensor was optimized for autonomous mobile robot platforms. Traditional ToF sensors have a narrow field of view and force mobile robotics platforms to integrate multiple sensors for collision avoidance. Jabil makes it possible for robotics designers to mount two of the Jabil sensors diagonally opposite to get complete radial coverage. This also removes the complexity of stitching multiple point clouds and the challenges of maintaining the alignment and calibration of multiple sensors.
The Jabil Omnidirectional Sensor also uses scene information to control illumination. This reduces sensor noise and improves data quality and power usage. Jabil worked with ams OSRAM to create high-power Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) to appropriately illuminate the surroundings. High-quality VCSELs were needed for the detection of obstacles in nanoseconds, and a customized Bidos 850nm VCSEL was developed for the Omnidirectional Sensor. This VCSEL emits infrared light, which reflects off of obstacles and is registered by a detector in the lens. It determines the distance to the object by the time it takes the light beam to return.
Jabil Inc. was founded in 1966 in Detroit. It is now headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, with over 100 other locations in 30 countries and over a quarter of a million employees worldwide. Jabil aims to be the most technologically advanced and trusted provider of manufacturing solutions. Its customers span multiple industries, including healthcare, life sciences, clean technology, defense, aerospace, automotive, computing, storage, consumer products, networking, and telecommunications. Jabil’s optical business unit, Jabil Optics, designs sensors to support lower-cost autonomous mobile robotics and collaborative robotics platforms.
For full list of finalists in the Best of Sensors 2021 Awards go online.