These 3D sensors achieve a wide field of view of up to 160° and provide simultaneous 3D measurements for multiple objects within the scanning area. The operation thus mimics the echolocation techniques used by bats and dolphins for navigation and orientation in the wild.
The TS3 combines carefully selected hardware components with proprietary signal processing algorithms. It is suited for indoor robotic navigation and object avoidance. Systems benefit from its real-time processing capabilities while keeping data transmission bandwidth and power consumption low, which is especially important for battery powered robots.
The TS3 sensor is an embedded sensor system that sends out ultrasound waves in a frequency range inaudible by humans. An array of microphones subsequently records the echoes from all objects in the sensor’s vicinity and computes their location in a 3-dimensional space. It therefore creates an entirely new way of ultrasonic sensing for autonomous systems.
The core technology is based on the Toposens’ SoundVision1 chip making the sensor system easily adaptable to a variety of product designs and qualifies it for use in next-level mass market vehicles in robotic and even automotive use cases like automated parking and next-level ADAS functionality.
Technical specifications include a detection range of up to 5 meters and a scan rate of approximately 28Hz. The TS3 returns up to 200 points per second with each 3D point corresponding to the cartesian coordinates and an additional volume measurement of the ultrasound wave’s echo returned by an object’s surface.
