TeraRanger Tower named named one of the best startup innovations of 2016 at Automatica

In the TeraRanger Tower, the French startupTerabee has developed the very first scanner to utilise multiple static sensors rather than conventional rotating or mechanical elements. The advantage of this approach is that it requires no motor, which makes the TeraRanger Tower both virtually silent and highly resistant to wear.

This non-rotating simultaneous multi-axis scanner has a great deal of potential to replace common lidar scanners. It uses infrared time-of-flight (3D systems that measure distances using the transit time technique) that have low energy requirements and are 100% eye-safe.

Weighing just 130 grams, the TeraRanger Tower is particularly suited to applications on lightweight and fast moving robots. Possible areas of use include simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) and collision avoidance for robots of this type, including drones.