Second of a series of Automate announcements. This technology enables better response for autonomous mobile robots. Another company I’ve only just learned about.
‘ADAR’, an award-winning 3D ultrasonic sensor poised to challenge the dominance of LiDAR in robotics perception, will launch at Automate 2025, May 12-15 in Detroit, Michigan. The first orders are already in place and the sensor is on track to achieve safety certification, an industry-first for 3D ultrasonic sensing in air.
Sonair, a Norwegian sensor firm, introduces ADAR, said to be the world’s first safe 3D ultrasonic sensor designed to boost safety in spaces shared by humans and robots to North American audiences May 12 at Automate 2025.
A typical 2D LiDAR safety scanner in an AMR only sees a person’s legs in one horizontal plane. In contrast, Sonair’s patented ADAR (acoustic detection and ranging) technology detects people and objects in 3D. A single ADAR sensor provides a full 180 x 180 field of view (FoV), and a 5 meters range, for the robot’s safety function.
The core technology behind ADAR has been in development at the MiNaLab sensor and nanotechnology research center in Norway for more than twenty years. The imaging method is called beamforming; it’s the backbone of processing for SONAR and RADAR, as well as in medical ultrasound imaging, and now ready for ultrasound in-air applications.
More than 20 global companies, including AMR manufacturers, industrial manufacturing conglomerates, automotive technology suppliers, and vendors within the autonomous health and cleaning industries, have quietly validated the Sonair ADAR sensor’s effectiveness as part of a successful Early Access Program launched in Summer 2024.
Acoustic detection and ranging (ADAR) uses airborne sound waves to interpret spatial information. ADAR is developed according to ISO13849:2023 performance level d/SIL2. The sensor creates a virtual safety shield with a range of 5 meters, that enables people and robots to share space safely. The innovation lies in combining wavelength-matched transducers with efficient signal processing for beamforming and object recognition algorithms.
Sonair ADAR is scheduled to be ready for shipment in July 2025.
