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Hands-Off Detection (HOD) and Heating

Enhance Driver Safety and Comfort With Our Single-Chip HOD Solution

Today's drivers benefit from Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS), and although these systems improve the driving experience greatly, most cars are not yet capable of full autonomous driving on all roads at all times. As a result, ensuring that the driver's hands always remain on the wheel is crucial for safety. Hands-Off Detection (HOD) systems are mandated in many countries for any car with a driver assistance system. Our single-chip HOD solution is a cost-effective implementation of this technology that takes heating into account while utilizing low-cost sensors.

Browse Our HOD-Enabled MCUs

AVR® DA Family

  • Lowest-cost, HOD-enabled MCU
  • LIN
  • Up to 128 KB Flash
  • Use cases: All sensor topologies, including single-element heating and sensing
Explore AVR DA Products

SAM C21 Family

  • CAN FD
  • 5V VDD
  • AUTOSAR®
  • Up to 256 KB Flash
  • Use cases: All sensor topologies including single-element heating and sensing*
Explore SAM C21 Products

PIC32CM JH Family

  • CAN FD
  • ECC with fault injection on Flash and SRAM
  • Arm® Cortex® M0+ core
  • 5V VDD
  • AUTOSAR®
  • Up to 512 KB Flash
  • Use cases: All sensor topologies including single-element heating and sensing*
Explore PIC32CM JH Products

dsPIC33C Family

  • CAN FD
  • dsPIC33CK single-core DSC
  • dsPIC33CH dual-core DSC
  • AUTOSAR®
  • Up to 1 MB Flash
  • Use cases: Single-element heating and sensing*
Explore dsPIC33C Products

dsPIC33CDV SiP

  • System-in-Package (SiP) solution for lowest board space
  • CAN FD/LIN transeiver
  • Analog Frontend (AFE)
  • LDO 
  • AUTOSAR®
  • Up to 256 KB Flash
  • Use cases: Single-element heating and sensing*
Explore dsPIC33CDV SiP Products

*Contact your local Microchip sales office for more information about single-element heating and sensing capability.

Integrated Steering Wheel Solution

Modern Steering Wheels

Modern Steering Wheels 

In addition to the main functionality, a modern steering wheel can offer a wide range of interactivity, control, comfort and safety for the driver through features such as:

  • HOD (in multiple zones)
  • Heating
  • Touch buttons

We offer a single-chip solution to execute these features with post-processing resources such as an HOD library and diagnostics. Our complete, low-cost, ready-to-validate solution is ready to minimize your time to market while also keeping board space low.

Multi-Zone HOD

Multi-Zone HOD

With multiple HOD zones, you can tell whether a driver is gripping the wheel or just barely touching it. All our HOD solutions support multi-zone HOD with just a single chip, meaning costs won’t increase if your number of HOD zones increases.

We can support the use of one heating element for the wheel with multiple HOD zones at the same time. Our solution packages are flexible, configurable and contain multiple zone examples and references. 

HOD and Heating Sensor Implementations

Depending on the type of car, steering wheels will have different features. Typically, you need multiple types of sensors or suppliers to implement these different features. However, we offer a single-chip solution that allows you to combine many different types of features to drive costs down.

Hands-off Detection and Heating topologies for automotive steering wheels

Design Resources

A complete solution for HOD includes post-processing resources in addition to the hardware. Our solution packages allow you to validate your design without any software development, which will speed up your time to market. 

  • Evaluation kits
  • Reference designs 
    • For example, visit our E-Two-Wheeler page to learn about our HOD reference design for heating and grip detection
  • HOD post-processing library
  • Examples
  • Tuning guide
  • Validation reports

This information is only available if you have executed a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with us and have created a myMicrochip account.

These materials will be distributed to you through our Secure Document Extranet (SDE) and your myMicrochip account. Please follow these steps to enable SDE. You can then use the links in the Solutions Packages section to request access to the information about each package.

If you need more information about our HOD solutions, please contact your local Microchip sales office.

Hands-Off Detection (HOD) and Heating

Although HOD is newer, heated steering wheels have existed for several decades. Combining the two features leads to very diverse implementations. As our graphic illustrates, we have both stacked and coplanar sensor topologies. Utilizing a single supplier with a unified approach can reduce layer count and drive costs down.

We offer modular evaluation kits to get your development started quickly. Our reference designs cover up to four HOD zones and are available for all HOD-enabled MCU families.

Access Package on SDE

Hands-Off Detection (HOD) and Heating

Keeping costs low is the key to success. Heated steering wheels will require a heating element—but what if you could add HOD to your heated steering wheel without any additional investment?

Our single-element heating and sensor solution package enables this functionality: a single wire for heating becomes a dual-use item by combining heating and sensing. Our dedicated evaluation kit.

Access Package on SDE

Hands-Off Detection (HOD) and Heating

Our solution packages include our feature-rich HOD post-processing library, which can track how temperature and humidity affect sensor capacitance and correctly report if the driver is using individual or multiple fingers or one or two hands on the steering wheel. It enables complex user interactions, including changing the temperature of the steering wheel, that are not possible with an individual touch controller.

The library also contains a complete set of sensor and touch hardware diagnostics. If your sensor topology changes from project to project, you can reuse the tuning and software implementations, which saves you time and effort.

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