Panasonic Develops 3D CCD Range Sensor

Tech-On: Panasonic has developed a 3D range sensor that uses a CCD and can be used at 100,000lux illumination. The range sensor irradiates a signal light on the measurement target and observes the reflected light. In extremely bright ambient light such as direct sunlight, the CCD sensor is saturated with only the ambient light, making it almost impossible to detect the signal light.

In the new sensor, the electric charge corresponding to that generated by the ambient light is removed from the charge generated in the photosensitive unit so that only the charge generated by the reflected light remains. I assume it uses some sort of fast gating to minimize the stray ambient light influence. The 3D CCD resolution is 16x120.