Sonair ADAR is scheduled to be ready for shipment in July 2025. | Credit: Sonair
Sonair, a sensor technology company in Oslo, Norway, is set to debut its ADAR (Acoustic Detection and Ranging) sensor to North American audiences at Automate 2025 next week in Detroit. Designed to boost safety in collaborative human-robot workspaces, ADAR aims to improve how autonomous mobile robots perceive and interact with their surroundings.
“Safety just got a lot simpler — and better adapted to detect people,” stated Knut Sandven, CEO of Sonair. “ADAR enables 3D 360-degree obstacle detection around autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) at a significantly lower cost than the sensor packages used today, enabling AMR manufacturers to build safe and affordable autonomous robots.”
The sensor earned Sonair a spot in the Automate Startup Challenge, highlighting the potential of its technology within the competitive automation landscape.
ADAR addresses lidar safety shortcomings
Current 2D lidar safety scanners often only detect a person’s legs in a single horizontal plane, according to Sonair. The company said it addresses this limitation with its patented ADAR technology. This approach provides 3D sensing, with a single ADAR sensor offering a 180 x 180-degree field of view and a 5 m (16.4 ft.) range for safety functions.
The core technology underpinning ADAR has been in development for over two decades at Norway’s MiNaLab sensor and nanotechnology research center. Sonair uses beamforming, a processing technique commonly used in sonar, radar, and medical ultrasound imaging, to adapt this method for in-air ultrasonic applications.
The company, which emerged from stealth a year ago, said it is on track to achieve safety certification for ADAR by the end of 2025. It claimed this would be the industry’s first 3D ultrasonic sensor operating in air receiving such certification.
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Sonair gives robots a sense of hearing
Sonair’s acoustic detection and ranging technology equips AMRs with omnidirectional depth perception, enabling them to “hear” their surroundings in real time by interpreting spatial information from airborne sound waves.
Developed according to the ISO13849:2023 performance level d/SIL2 safety standards, ADAR creates a virtual safety shield to facilitate safe human-robot collaboration. Sonair said its innovation is its combination of wavelength-matched transducers with signal processing for beamforming and object-recognition algorithms.
“ADAR is an advanced plug-and-play sensing technology ensuring compliance with safety standards. With its small form factor, low power, and compute consumption, it is easy to integrate as part of a combined sensor package,” explained Sandven. “It takes the ‘Uh oh’ out of human-robot coexistence and replaces it with an ‘All clear.’”
ADAR gets validation for commercialization
Prior to its public unveiling, ADAR has undergone testing and validation through an Early Access Program launched in the summer of 2024. More than 20 global companies spanning AMR manufacturing, industrial conglomerates, automotive technology suppliers, and the autonomous health and cleaning sectors have confirmed the sensor’s effectiveness.
The positive feedback and performance have already translated into commercial orders and endorsements, said Sonair. Japan’s Fuji Corp. has procured ADAR for its upcoming line of AMRs, and a Swiss manufacturer of autonomous cleaning robots has also adopted the technology.
“Sonair combines rapid development capabilities with a flexible mindset,” said Koji Kawaguchi, general manager of the Innovation Promotion Department at Fuji. “Thanks to their cooperation, through comprehensive testing, we were able to confirm the high suitability of their sensors for autonomous mobile robots.”
Shuhei Monobe, department manager of the Electronics Devices Department at Cornes Technologies, a distribution partner for Sonair, noted the technology has strong potential in the Japanese market.
“We see potential for Sonair’s ADAR technology in the Japanese robotics market, particularly in applications requiring reliable, safe human-robot interaction,” he said. “As a novel approach to 3D sensing, ADAR offers advantages in both performance and cost. We look forward to deepening our collaboration with Sonair and bringing this innovation to more of our clients.”
Attendees at Automate 2025 can see ADAR’s capabilities firsthand at Booth 4710. Sonair said its demonstration will allow visitors to experience how the sensor “sees” themselves and other objects through airborne sound waves.
The company said it expects ADAR to be ready for shipment in July 2025, marking a step forward in enhancing safety and efficiency in the evolving world of robotics and automation.
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