Distance Sensor – Choose the right one for your business?

Ultrasonic Sensor

Ultrasonic sensors use a single transducer to send a pulse of ultrasonic sound waves and to receive the echo. The sensor detects the distance to the target by measuring time cost between the sending and receiving of the ultrasonic pulse.

Common Application of Ultrasonic Sensor

Industrial Measurement

Liquid Level Measurement

Robot Obstacle Avoidance

Car Parking Assistance

Smart Home

Benefits and Drawbacks

Benefits:

1.Stable and reliable. No rotating parts, anti-electromagnetic interference, strong corrosive liquids resistance. 

2.High frequency, Short wavelength and small diffraction phenomenon.

3.Great performance for detecting liquid and plane object.

Shortages:

1.Weak anti-interference ability. Acoustic noise may interfere with the output accuracy, and multiple ultrasonic sensors of the same frequency might cause crosstalk problem.

2.High false alarm rate. Large FOV. When detecting multiple targets or the coarse irregular surface, the reflective waves might cause crosstalk. 

3.Limited detection range, normally within 100 meters.

4.Not suitable for measuring fast-moving target. Compared with other ranging solutions, the response time of sound wave is longer for sending and receiving.

mmWave Sensor

mmWave sensor uses the electromagnetic wave sensing technology for detection of surrounding objects and measuring the distance, velocity and angle of these objects. It is a non-contact sensor which operates in the spectrum between 30GHz and 300GHz. mmWave sensor is able to penetrate certain materials such as plastic, drywall, clothing, and offers good performance in extreme weather conditions such as rain, fog, dust and snow. 

Common Application of mmWave Sensor

ADAS

Intelligent Traffic System

Industrial Measurement and Security

Drone for altitude holding

Smart Home

Benefits and Drawbacks

Benefits:

1.Long detection range - over 100m

2.Good performance in extreme weather conditions such as rain, fog, dust and snow

3.Multi-target detection strength 

Shortages:

1.Low distance resolution than other distance measuring solutions

2.Vulnerable to electromagnetic interference. Electromagnetic interference might raise false alarms rate.

3.Low Accuracy or false detection for static object or thin object such as guardrail, plastic, drywall, or clothing.

4.Distance blur and speed blur will inevitably occur in the air defense environment

LiDAR Sensor

LiDAR is a surveying method that measures distance to a target by illuminating the target with pulsed laser light and measuring the reflected pulses with a sensor. The name LiDAR, now used as an acronym of light detection and ranging was originally a portmanteau of light and radar. (Source: Wikipedia)


Common Application of LiDAR Sensor

Level Sensor for silo and other containers

Intelligent Traffic System

Autonomous Driving

Robots 

Industrial Measurement and Security

ADAS and ACC

Drone and UAV

Smart Home

Benefits and Drawbacks

Benefits:

1.High Accuracy and High frequency. Best performance at dark environment.

2.Stable and reliable. Benewake LiDAR has full solid-state structure, no rotating part. The working life of solid-state LiDAR is normally three times longer than rotating one.

3.Flexible Detection Range. For Benewake LiDAR, the detection ranges of different LiDAR products are from 12m to 180m.

4.Customized FOV (Field of view). For Benewake LiDAR, it has different type of sensor products for different application scenarios. For example, CE30 has large FOV for AGV and robots. TF series have narrow FOV for lower false-alarm rate in industrial security and for detecting level in narrow containers.

5. Cost Effective. Benewake LiDAR offers great performance with mass-productive price. The compact size and solid-state structure makes it easy to be integrated in assembly line for mass productive automatic equipment.

Shortages:

1.Might affected by extreme weather such as rain, fog, dust and snow.

2.Benewake TF02-C can clean up dust automatically. Click here to know more>>> 

3.Benewake TF03 has built-in algorithm solution for rain/snow conditions. Click here to know more>>>

4.Limited detecting range to around 200 meters.

5.Might affected by strong environmental light.

Ranging sensor sourcing and selecting is based into the different application scenarios. And for some applications with higher requirement for detection such as perimeter security and autonomous driving, multi-sensor fusion solution also needs to be considered. 

If you are interested to test Benewake sensors, please click Contact Us or send email to bw@benewake.com