Grid-Eye 90° from Panasonic brings the right angle to Machine Learning based IR sensing

Privacy conscious designers have appreciated the 64-pixel resolution of the Grid-Eye family, and the Grid-Eye 90° will enhance systems designed to track and count the movement of people tracking as well as other applications.

Comments Chetan Joshi, Product Manager at Panasonic Industry: “Knowing where people are is the key to design a smart space. Today, different industries want to understand and optimise how their buildings are being used, especially the businesses in retail, hospitality and healthcare. Similarly, the lighting industry is increasingly moving towards providing personalised ambient lighting experiences. The pandemic has also highlighted the importance of management of highly frequented or confined spaces – like offices or public washroom facilities. With many markets suddenly interested in people tracking, the holy grail of such solutions has always been finding the right balance between scalability and cost-effectiveness. Solutions designed around Grid-Eye 90° delivers on both.”

A new sensor with 90° field of view for privacy conscious people tracking

Previously, Grid-Eye has been used in a variety of applications where absolute temperature values were required to detect hot spots in a smart kitchen or get general idea about hotter areas of a room for smart air conditioning. At the same time, Grid-Eye has also been found suitable for people tracking/counting applications.

Innovative product designers have used Grid-Eye 60° as a low-cost IR matrix sensor as an alternative to camera or wireless radar type solutions. The new 90° variant of Grid-Eye builds on Panasonic’s deep expertise of innovative sensing technologies. The new wide-angle lens allows Grid-Eye to have a wider field of view (FoV), improving on previous sensors which offer a 36° and 60° FoV. With the launch of Grid-Eye 90°, system designers can capture the IR signature of a larger area, leading to fewer sensors required to cover a given area. This leads to CapEx improvements deploying people tracking/counting devices in indoor environments.