In June, Fierce Electronics and Sensors Converge presented the 2023 Best of Sensors Awards at the Sensors Converge Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, Calif. These awards shine a spotlight on the most innovative companies, technologies, and teams in the sensors industry. Designs in 14 categories are judged by a panel of industry experts on their uniqueness, the issues they address, and the value they add to the marketplace. This year Calumino won in the industrial IoT category for its Calumino Thermal Sensor (CTS).
With traditional thermal imaging sensors, you have to choose between low-end thermophile arrays — performance isn't up to par with these. Also, high-end microbolometer arrays can be pricey. Calumino changed this dynamic with the Calumino Thermal Sensor.
Calumino's patented technology performs as well as microbolometers, with a price that is closer to thermopiles. Its product combines a CMOS image sensor with a unique MEMS micromirror array that was invented by Calumino founder and CEO Marek Steffanson. This technology couples with artificial intelligence (AI), making the CTS a game-changer for detecting and delivering real-time analysis of objects, people, animals, and machinery at a price that was unheard of in industrial IoT until now.
"Winning the Industrial IoT Award at the Best of Sensors Awards 2023 is a great honor for us," Steffanson said. "Our ambition is to create new industries with our ground-breaking innovation, and rodent detection is just the beginning."
The Calumino Thermal Sensor strikes the perfect balance between having a high enough resolution to provide accurate insights and a low enough resolution to minimize bandwidth. It preserves the privacy of individuals while being sensitive enough to distinguish humans from other warm objects, giving you the non-intrusiveness of a motion sensor with the intelligence of a smart camera.
The proprietary AI technology embedded in the CTS enables it to analyze the thermal video stream it generates (in real-time on-cloud or on-edge) and deliver a human-readable analysis of the data to other systems via integrations. These features bring capabilities like hazard detection, injury detection, anomaly detection, asset monitoring, thermal mapping, and intrusion detection to the industrial IoT market via mass device adoption with no risk to privacy.
Use cases for the Calumino Thermal Sensor include detecting small animals in pest control, detecting occupancy and optimizing energy usage in smart building management, detecting falls and living patterns in senior care, and monitoring assets and detecting anomalies in manufacturing.
When the CTS is implemented in a Calumino Sensor Hub, it can be installed in a wide range of physical locations without needing wired network access. It can use a low-power mesh network, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi. The Calumino Thermal Sensor can also use industry-standard protocols, like MQTT, to integrate with many different cloud IoT platforms or with a locally-hosted system on your own network.
Calumino was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia. Calumino's mission is to merge powerful and economical thermal sensor technology with artificial intelligence. The Calumino platform fills the void between low-performance motion sensors and intrusive cameras, allowing powerful insights to be delivered while keeping human identities private.
To learn more about the other sensors that won the Best of Sensors Award this year, check out this article.