Sensor technology for vision is evolving. Following in the footsteps of ultrasound and lidar sensors, mmWave Radar is the next generation of vision sensor technology about to hit the mainstream market.
Cameras and Lidar sensors have been the go-to technology for computer vision for many years. mmWave radar is the natural complementary sensor and excels where light-based sensors are the weakest.
Up until now high quality radar sensors have only been accessible to specialist engineers. Working with radar has been hard and sensors very expensive.
On October 29, 2020 RadarIQ Limited proudly launched their all-new mmWave radar sensor to the world via a Kickstarter campaign to make high quality mmWave radar available for the first time to the mass-market. Makers and professional engineers pay attention!
The four main features of the sensor are:
- Extremely easy to get started with and use.
- Very affordable.
- See through walls.
- Detect and track multiple objects at once.
As Engineers, we love working with new technology and are truly passionate about making it accessible to the maker community and to other engineers in order to really enhance their projects” said Matt, the co-founder of RadarIQ.
“The concept was to develop a 60GHz mmRadar module that would be easy to use, without requiring engineers to understand the complexities of Radar or high frequency RF hardware design.
“RadarIQ helps simplify the process of using radar with its plug-and-play design that comes with out-of-the-box support for Windows, Linux, Raspberry Pi, the Robot Operating System, and Arduino.” said Aaron, the other RadarIQ co-founder.
In addition to being the next evolution in object tracking and 3D vision, the key features of this mmRadar sensor include:
- Seeing through walls (due to the unique properties of radar waves).
- Measuring speed and distance with great accuracy.
- Detecting and tracking multiple objects at once.
- Robust to all sorts of hostile environmental conditions.
- Being production ready and ready to integrate into real-world systems.
Furthermore, radar is the perfect companion to fuse with other vision-based sensor technology. Radar excels in the areas where camera-based sensors are weakest, enabling next-level reliability for autonomous movement. The RadarIQ sensor is ideal for harsh environments. The sensor can see in the dark, very bright environments as well as through smoke, fog, or be completely hidden behind a barrier.
This first-to-market RadarIQ sensor is packaged with a high-quality 0.5 meter USB cable for PC connection and a 0.5m USB cable for serial connection. The early bird priced modules have all run out, but the regular campaign price sensors are still available for $215 USD. This Kickstarter campaign is a great way of getting this remarkable innovation at a fraction of its market price (The normal retail price after the Kickstarter campaign is US$300).
RadarIQ is a New Zealand-based company with a small dedicated team of specialist engineers who have been developing the product for the last two years.
The campaign will run from the 29th of October till the 8th of December.
For more information, please visit:
Company website: https://radariq.io
Kickstarter campaign page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/radariq/radariq-sensor
