Jabil Optics Wins Best of Sensor Award 2021

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Jabil Inc. is pleased to announce that their innovative omnidirectional sensor won the Best of Sensors 2021 award in the Optical & Cameras category. The award highlights cutting-edge advancements and achievements that are moving the sensors industry forward.

“After reviewing all of the Best of Sensors award submissions, it is clear that the sensors industry continues to thrive with new, innovative solutions,” said Charlene Soucy, senior director, Sensors Converge. “The goal of our program is to honor and promote wide recognition of the industry’s most transformative technologies and teams. Congratulations to this year’s award winners.”

The awards program was created to spotlight the year’s best innovations, technologies, teams and individuals in the sensors industry. Submissions were judged based on the value to the marketplace, the impact of the problems it solves or issues it addresses, and the uniqueness of the design. The judges for the Best of Sensors awards were Jack Gold, J. Gold Associates, LLC; Roger Grace, Roger Grace Associates; Matt Hamblen, Fierce Electronics; Catherine Liao, Blumio; and Brian Zahnstecher, PowerRox.

The innovative time-of-flight (ToF) depth sensor from Jabil Optics offers, with its industry-leading 270° x 60°field of view (FOV), an advantage over existing solutions in the market. The narrow fields of views of conventional ToF sensors forces industrial mobile robotics platforms to integrate multiple sensors for collision avoidance. In contrast to the conventional solution of using multiple ToF sensors, the extremely wide FOV of the omnidirectional sensor removes the need for integrating multiple sensors and subsequently the complexity of stitching multiple point clouds and the challenges of maintaining the alignment and calibration of multiple sensors. The ground-breaking, solid-state design is one of several sensing systems Jabil’s optical business unit (Jabil Optics) is designing to support lower-cost autonomous mobile robotics and collaborative robotics platforms. 

“We are honored to receive this Best of Sensors award,” said Ian Blasch, senior director of business development, Jabil Optics. “We see this award as external validation of the high-quality design capabilities coming from our Jabil engineering and design teams. The omnidirectional sensor is one of many novel sensors Jabil is architecting for our robotics, industrial and automotive customers.”

For nearly two decades, Jabil Optics has been recognized by leading technology companies as the premier service provider for advanced optical design, industrialization and manufacturing. Jabil Optics designers, engineers and researchers specialize in solving complex optical problems for its customers in 3D sensing, augmented and virtual reality, action camera, automotive, industrial and healthcare markets. Additionally, Jabil Optics customers leverage expertise in product design, process development, testing, in-house active alignment, supply chain management and manufacturing expertise from Kasalis, a technology division within Jabil.