Sonair built its 3D ultrasonic sensor with robotic safety in mind

As robots increasingly enter human spaces, robotics companies will need to think about safety differently than they did when robots were largely siloed from their human counterparts.  

Sonair thinks its sensors can help robotics companies reach their safety goals — with a solution that is both better and cheaper than popular LIDAR technology.  

The Oslo, Norway-based company built an ADAR (acoustic detection and ranging) sensor for robots that uses high frequency sound. These sensors send out ultrasound waves and capture how the sound echoes back. These signals give robots a three-dimensional view of their surroundings. 

This data complements a robot’s other sensors and cameras to give the robot’s operating system a clearer picture of the environment.  

“Perception for a human — what we’re using the most is our eyes, but we’re also using other senses to perceive our environment, our ears and our brain to interpret all our senses,” said Sonair co-founder and CEO Knut Sandven in an interview with TechCrunch. “The same is for robots or autonomous machines. They’re using cameras. Cameras are really great to understand the environment, but they’re not good for reliably detecting objects under all circumstances.” 

Sonair is designed to help fill those gaps — especially for depth perception. Traditionally, robotics companies turn to LIDAR sensors, which send out beams of light and measure how they bounce back, to gather that information. Sandven said Sonair’s sensors are a better option because they can capture more comprehensive data.  

“LIDAR is like swiping a laser pointer,” Sandven said. “[But] if you shout out in a room, you will fill the room with sound. We will fill the room with sound.” 

The sensor’s output is structured in a standard industry format, Sandven said, so it’s designed to work alongside a variety of different robotic hardware and software.  

The company released its sensor earlier this year and has since seen strong demand from the robotics field, with multiple companies planning to incorporate Sonair’s sensors into their next robot models, Sandven said.  

Sonair has also seen demand from the industrial safety sector. Sandven said companies are using the sensors to detect when people enter areas with heavy machinery so the machines can be shut off automatically before an accident happens.  

Now, Sonair is looking to scale up adoption of its tech and just raised a $6 million round to do so. The round included new and returning investors Scale Capital, Norway’s state-backed Investinor, and ProVenture, among others.  

Sandven said that investors who are active in the robotics space immediately understood the problem that the company is looking to solve. This isn’t surprising as safety will likely become a major concern as robots start interacting with humans more — not unlike the safety conversations that emerged in the early days of the self-driving car industry.  

Fady Saad, a general partner, at robotics-focused Cybernetix Ventures, which is not an investor in Sonair, recently told TechCrunch that potential safety concerns were one of the reasons he doesn’t expect people to want humanoid robots in their home anytime soon.  

The “kind of dirty secret of humanoids at homes s there’s a lot of safety, lots of security, lots of concerns,” Saad told TechCrunch in August. “If this thing falls on pets or kids, it will hurt them, right? This is just one aspect of a big hurdle that no one is paying attention to, or very few people are paying attention to.” 

Sandven said Sonair doesn’t currently have direct competition for its sonar-based sensors, but that could change as more companies try to find safety solutions for robots.  

“My goal is to have this technology in all robots, like you have with cameras,” Sandven said. “If we talk again this time next year, we will have a pretty good indication whether that is the direction we are heading.”