In addition to conventional detection tasks such as detecting the presence of people or obstacles, the new image sensors provide various types of added functionality including distance measurement and shape detection. They have been designed for use in a wide variety of applications, such as automotive systems for detecting people or obstacles, object detection in semiconductor wafer transfer systems, shape detection by industrial robots, and intruder detection by security systems.
Samples of the new distance linear/area image sensors will be available from 1st February, 2013.