Melexis Launches Breakthrough Arcminaxis™ Position Sensing Technology and Products for Robotic Joints

November 8, 2024, Tessenderlo, Belgium - Melexis, a global microelectronics engineering company, announced the launch of Arcminaxis™, a breakthrough magnetic technology designed to meet the growing market demand for affordable and high-precision robot joint position sensing solutions. The first product equipped with Arcminaxis™ technology, MLX90384, provides manufacturers with a cost-effective solution by simplifying the assembly process of robot joints. The product comes with a magnet and software package that supports calibration and efficient operation, providing simplicity and economy for design.

In the design of robots in the past, manufacturers often give priority to top-performing sensor chips, while considering cost factors relatively insufficiently. However, with the continuous expansion of robot applications, manufacturers are paying more and more attention to reducing costs while improving production efficiency, which makes them more cautious in selecting components to ensure the economy and simplicity of the design while maintaining the high reliability and precise motion repeatability of the robot.

As the first product of Melexis Arcminaxis™ series, MLX90384 successfully combines excellent performance with extreme economy, cleverly finding an ideal balance between high-performance but expensive optical solutions and low-cost but poor dipole magnetic solutions to solve the above challenges.

The core advantage of the MLX90384 lies in its innovative magnet design and excellent sensing capabilities. Unlike conventional multi-pole magnet sensor chips, the MLX90384 breaks the limitation that the magnetic pole size must be strictly matched to the sensor chip. This feature makes it possible to use larger and stronger magnets, which can output stronger signals and support larger operating gaps. More importantly, the same sensor chip can flexibly match magnets of different sizes. Therefore, Arcminaxis™ technology integrates the following unique and key performance combinations: up to 18-bit resolution, ±0.5mm loose magnet and sensor chip placement tolerance, and nominal 1.5mm magnet and chip spacing.

In the field of robot design, MLX90384 effectively reduces the cost of sensor chips and magnets with its functional advantages. Compared with existing multi-pole solutions, MLX90384 not only has a more convenient design and assembly process, but also stands out for its larger assembly tolerance and stronger resistance to mechanical wear. MLX90384 adopts TSSOP-16 package and provides a software package of magnets, operating system and calibration tools. In addition, Melexis' Arcminaxis™ technology further enhances design flexibility by supporting application scenarios such as eccentric axes, through axes and linear encoders.

“With the introduction of the MLX90384, Melexis is able to provide application-oriented and forward-looking solutions that achieve the ideal balance between performance and cost for the next generation of robots,” said Atanas Dikov, Marketing Manager at Melexis . “This product marks the beginning of Melexis’ innovative Arcminaxis™ family, and in the future we will launch more solutions tailored for the robotics field.”

The MLX90384 solution integrates a chip, magnet and core operating algorithm that can be directly put into testing. In addition, Melexis also provides a plug-and-play evaluation kit containing a pre-assembled, pre-calibrated design and a pre-programmed microcontroller.