echoONE series ultrasonic sensor

Micro-Epsilon’s catalogue covers laser triangulation, confocal, capacitive, eddy-current, inductive, draw-wire and interferometric displacement sensors, but no ultrasonic sensor called echoONE could be found. The name corresponds to the ECHO ONE from Toposens, another German company (now MEYSENS GmbH), which is a 3D ultrasonic echolocation sensor. Rather than returning a single distance like a conventional ultrasonic proximity sensor, it emits ultrasonic pulses and uses an array of microphones to locate reflecting objects in three dimensions, producing a sparse 3D point cloud. Because ultrasound is unaffected by lighting, transparency or colour, it detects glass, dark and reflective objects that challenge optical sensors. Toposens targets AGV and mobile robot collision avoidance, forklift fork-tip monitoring and autonomous parking, and offered a development kit (ECHO ONE DK). Range, field of view and update rate should be taken from the Toposens documentation.