by Gary Mintchell | Oct 11, 2024 | Automation, Sensors
My marketing communications colleague has another new client from outside my usual comfort zone. The autonomous mobile robot (AMR) continues to grow becoming more valuable not only for warehousing, but also for manufacturing. One of the more costly components is the 3D LiDAR sensor.
She introduced me to Sonair. This Norwegian technology company has closed a new funding round, led by Skyfall Ventures. The investment introduces a completely new category of sensors said to transform a mobile robot’s spatial awareness from 2D to 3D, offering a significantly improved safety performance over traditional vision systems while cutting costs by 50-80%. The company’s Early Access Program now counts AMR manufacturers, automakers, and distributors from across the world. This technology uses ultrasound for 3D spatial awareness.
A typical 2D LiDAR scanner in an AMR only sees a person’s legs in one horizontal plane. In contrast, Sonair’s patented ADAR (Acoustic Ranging and Detection) technology detects people and objects in 3D, with low energy and computational requirements.
Sonair has now raised a total of $6.8M with Skyfall Ventures leading the latest $1.6M round. RunwayFBU, another early-stage VC fund, also contributed to the round.
Ultrasonic sensors are less affected by environmental factors such as poor lighting, dust, or changing temperatures, ensuring reliable performance in diverse conditions where traditional sensors may fail. Sonair’s sensor can also detect reflective or see-through surfaces such as glass or mirrors without difficulty. Benefits recently recognized at the international Sensors Converge event in Santa Clara, California in June this year, where Sonair won the Best of Sensors Award 2024 in the Automotive & Autonomous sensor category.
The patented ADAR technology has been in development at the world-renowned 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 ultrasound imaging known in medicine but now used in the air.
By combining wavelength-matched transducers with cutting-edge software for beamforming and object-recognition algorithms, Sonair makes 3D spatial information available simply by transmitting sound and listening. This allows mobile robots to detect distance and direction to all objects in a 180×180 field of view with a range of up to 5 meters, providing a wider field of view than existing technologies, while also detecting obstacles above and below the 2D plane of the LiDAR.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 19, 2024 | News, Organizations, Process Control, Sensors
Partnerships continue to form core strategy in this maturing industrial marketplace. This partnership allows each entity to focus resources on their core businesses forming a new entity with another focus.
Perhaps more technology companies should consider splitting out pieces of the business that could be focused and innovative. Then the core business could also be more focused and innovative. We’ve seen Emerson realign its portfolio over the past few years, for example.
German sensor company SICK and the Swiss measurement and automation technology specialist Endress+Hauser have agreed on a strategic partnership. Endress+Hauser will take over worldwide sales and service of SICK’s process analyzers and gas flowmeters, with a joint venture to be established for their production and further development. The aim of the partnership is to provide customers with even better support in increasing their efficiency and sustainability.
SICK and Endress+Hauser signed a joint memorandum of understanding for a strategic partnership in October 2023. Since then, the project has been examined and plans for implementing the cooperation have been drawn up. Following approval by the respective supervisory bodies, representatives of both companies have now signed a corresponding agreement. The closing of the transaction is planned for the turn of the year 2024/2025 and is subject to approval by antitrust authorities.
As a key aspect of the strategic partnership, Endress+Hauser will take over sales and service for process analysis and gas flow measurement technology completely. Around 800 specialized sales and service employees in 42 countries will transfer from SICK to Endress+Hauser. Customers will benefit by receiving more products from a single source. The global Endress+Hauser sales network will enable additional customers to be acquired, more industries to be reached and new applications to be developed.
From 2025, the production and further development of process analyzers and gas flowmeters will be the responsibility of a joint venture in which each partner will hold a 50 percent stake. It will employ about 730 people at several locations in Germany. The joint venture will work closely with Endress+Hauser’s competence centers to drive product innovations forward efficiently.
SICK is one of the world’s leading solution providers for sensor-based applications in the industrial sector. The core business of factory and logistics automation, which accounts for more than 80 percent of sales, will not be affected by the partnership.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 17, 2024 | Automation, Robots, Sensors, Technology
One place where technology and integration and partners advances lies in the vision and robotics area. This news concerns Orbbec 3D vision systems integrating with NVIDIA Isaac Perceptor robotics platforms.
In brief: Gemini 330 cameras with built-in depth processing deliver high-precision Depth+RGB vision for NVIDIA Isaac Perceptor AI-based perception workflow for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in indoor and outdoor environments.
Orbbec, an industry leader dedicated to 3D vision systems, announced its Gemini 330 series Stereo Vision 3D cameras are now integrated with NVIDIA Isaac Perceptor, a reference workflow for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) built on GPU-accelerated Isaac ROS.
These cameras enhance depth quality and provide longer-range sensing in varied lighting conditions, which lets Isaac Perceptor – whose general availability was announced by NVIDIA today at COMPUTEX – output 3D reconstruction and obstacle cost maps of any unstructured environment.
The Gemini 335/335L/336/336L cameras operate in both passive and active laser-illuminated modes to ensure high-quality depth and RGB data output even in challenging lighting conditions. The depth algorithms are processed in the camera by Orbbec’s latest depth engine ASIC and thus eliminates the burden on the NVIDIA Jetson Orin module-based compute for such operations. The cameras include internal IMU and temperature sensors and have a working range of 0.2-10 meters, global shutter image sensors, wide field-of-view lenses, high frame rates, low latency and precise multi-camera synchronization.
Orbbec also announces the Gemini 336/336L variants for improved performance in indoor environments by adding NIR bandpass filters. This reduces the potential of “holes” in a depth map due to glare from shiny floors and other reflective surfaces and “ghost” images from repetitive patterns in the environment.
In addition to AMRs, the Gemini 330 series cameras are well suited for robot arm applications that utilize AI vision for bin-picking, palletization, scanning and sorting applications, especially where reduction in glare and resulting holes from glossy surfaces are important.
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 23, 2024 | Automation, Sensors, Wireless
Digi International PR has been working overtime sending news to me. This news regards remote monitoring and control.
Digi International introduced Digi Connect Sensor XRT-M designed to deliver reliable and seamless remote monitoring and management. It offers customers both edge and cloud-based control options, with a management platform equipped with an intuitive interface for streamlining data management and enhancing operational efficiency.
Infrastructure monitoring applications include:
- Critical infrastructure and civil engineering projects
- Water/wastewater monitoring and remote management
- Environmental monitoring
- Industrial automation and control
Key Features of Digi Connect Sensor XRT-M include:
- Extended battery life with lightweight cloud connection and dual 14.5 Ah batteries
- Rated for industrial environments with wide temperature range, C1D2 certification with NEMA enclosure
- Device health and sensor data stored in Digi Axess
- Configurable read and report intervals
- Connect to and power multiple sensors
- Compatible with a wide range of industry-standard sensors
- Modbus protocol support
- Global cellular coverage
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 19, 2024 | Automation, Sensors, Technology
Computer vision technology and application seemed to have been in a long lull until semiconductor advances of the past few years. Now companies are unleashing new products at an astonishing pace. This is an updated product from Digi International—a company I covered a long time ago who became less interesting to me and now has returned to my view.
Digi International introduced the wireless and highly power-efficient Digi ConnectCore MP25 system-on-module (SOM) at Embedded World 2024. Featuring AI and machine learning capabilities, with an integrated neural processing unit and image signal processor, Digi ConnectCore MP25 is designed for next-generation computer vision applications in critical sectors such as industrial, medical, energy and transportation. The module provides highly reliable wireless connectivity and time-sensitive networking (TSN) making it perfect for smart portable devices and Industry 4.0.
Based on STMicroelectronics’ STM32MP25 MPU processor, Digi ConnectCore MP25 is engineered to streamline application development under demanding requirements to improve efficiency, reduce costs, boost innovation and improve end-customer satisfaction.
With an innovative architecture, Digi ConnectCore MP25 features two Cortex-A35 cores operating at 1.5GHz supplemented by a Cortex-M33 core and a Cortex-M0+. Enhanced with an AI/ML neural processing unit (NPU) delivering 1.35 TOPS and an image signal processor (ISP), the SOM provides accelerated machine learning capabilities for advanced applications. Its comprehensive connectivity options include 802.11ac Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless technologies, along with seamless cellular integration for expanded possibilities. The ultra-compact Digi SMTplus form-factor (30 x 30 mm) and industrial temperature ranges (-40 to +85 °C), ensure reliability in the harshest environments, making it an excellent choice for a wide variety of IoT applications.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 28, 2024 | Automation, Sensors, Technology
As long as I have been working with and covering vision technology in manufacturing bandwidth has been the constraint to robust applications. A Canadian company called Pleora Technologies has introduced a patented lossless compression technology called RapidPIX that is said to increase data throughput by almost 70 percent while meeting the low latency and reliability demands of machine vision and medical imaging applications.
RapidPIX is initially available on Pleora’s new iPORT NTx-Mini-LC platform, which provides a compression-enabled drop-in upgrade of the widely deployed NTX-Mini embedded interface. With added compression, designers can deploy the iPORT NTx-Mini-LC to support low latency transmission of GigE Vision compliant packets at more than 1.5 Gbps throughput rates over existing 1 Gb Ethernet infrastructure. Manufacturers are designing the iPORT NTx-Mini-LC embedded interface with RapidPIX compression into X-ray panels for medical and dental imaging, contact image sensors (CIS), and industrial camera applications.
Pleora’s RapidPIX compression is now available on the iPORT NTX-Mini-LC embedded interface to support low latency transmission of GigE Vision compliant packets at more than 1.5 Gbps throughput rates over existing 1 Gbps infrastructure. To speed time-to-market, the iPORT NTx-Mini-LC with RapidPIX Development Kit helps manufacturers develop system or camera prototypes and proof-of-concepts easily and rapidly, often without undertaking hardware development.
