'ADAR', an award-winning 3D ultrasonic sensor poised to challenge the dominance of LiDAR in robotics perception, was launched at Automate 2025.

Oslo, Norway, May 2025: Sonair ADAR, the world's first safe 3D ultrasonic sensor designed to boost safety in spaces shared by humans and robots debuted to North American audiences on May 12 at Automate 2025, one of the world's leading automation trade shows.

Sonair, the Norwegian sensor firm behind the award-winning sensor, was selected from a crowded field of contenders to participate in the prestigious Automate Startup Challenge.

"Safety just got a lot simpler — and better adapted to detect people," says Knut Sandven, CEO, 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."

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 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 medical ultrasound imaging, and now ready for ultrasound in-air applications.

Sonair is on track to achieve safety certification for ADAR by the end of 2025. This is an industry-first for 3D ultrasonic sensing in air.