beRobox Adds Arm-Mounted 3D Ultrasonic Safety to Palletizers

Collaborative and automated palletizing cells deployed across high-throughput packaging lines struggle with balancing human-robot safety and operational throughput. Traditional safeguarding frameworks rely on static perimeter fencing, physical light curtains, or area laser scanners fixed to the floor or cell frame. While effective at halting machine motion upon trip, static zones cannot adapt to shifting robotic positions and frequently trigger full-cell emergency stops during routine manual pallet changeovers. Moreover, optical safeguarding technologies such as infrared area scanners and camera systems can suffer performance degradation in challenging industrial environments characterized by heavy airborne dust, changing ambient lighting, high-contrast glare, or reflective packaging materials. Addressing these constraints requires dynamic, volumetric presence detection integrated directly into moving robotic kinematic structures.

Arm-Mounted Ultrasonic Sensing and Dynamic Zone Management
To modernize machine safety in material handling, beRobox introduced 3D Dynamic Safety, an arm-integrated safety module designed for its PALTZ robotic palletizer portfolio. Rather than restricting safety fields to static boundaries surrounding the workstation perimeter, the module mounts sensing instrumentation directly onto the articulating robot arm. As the manipulator moves through its reach envelope, the sensor sweeps with it, generating a volumetric safety zone that dynamically shifts and adapts to the robot's real-time trajectory and coordinates.

This localized, dynamic awareness allows the palletizer to manage operator interactions selectively without initiating unnecessary full-cell shutdowns. During dual-bay palletizing sequences, an operator can enter an adjacent pallet station to remove finished loads or position empty skids while the robotic arm safely continues stacking at the active station. Because the sensor continually tracks 3D space around the moving end-of-arm tooling, it maintains continuous presence detection. If an operator remains within the robot's active zone, the system prevents unintended restarts until the envelope is completely clear.

Acoustic Detection Across Challenging Plant Floors
The dynamic module is powered by the ADAR One, an ultrasonic detection and ranging sensor developed by Sonair. Built using an array of piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUTs), the unit utilizes airborne ultrasound rather than optical beams to map surroundings across three dimensions. This acoustic sensing method operates unaffected by dust clouds, direct sunlight, fluctuating plant illumination, or clear stretch wrap that can cause false trips or blind spots in optical safety barriers.

The system made its public debut on October 19 at PACK EXPO International 2026 in Chicago, demonstrating active dynamic monitoring on a PALTZ palletizing cell integrated with a Universal Robots UR20 collaborative arm. Max Walsh, Robotic Safety Engineer at beRobox, stated that combining the robot’s position with real-time 3D presence detection allows the safety system to react selectively, providing the operational flexibility needed to handle pallet transfers without compromising functional safety compliance.



Additional Context
This section details technical specifications and competitive benchmarking not included in the original product announcement.

In industrial machinery safety governed by ISO 13849-1 and IEC 62061, mobile safeguarding architectures must satisfy Performance Level d (PL d) and Safety Integrity Level 2 (SIL 2) to supervise hazardous moving tooling directly. The Sonair ADAR One sensor incorporated in the module provides a 180-degree by 180-degree hemispherical field of view, detecting human torso profiles up to 3 meters and limbs up to 2.5 meters away with centimeter-level ranging precision. The sensor operates with an internal refresh rate up to 18 Hz, an Ingress Protection rating of IP64, and dual-channel fail-safe Output Signal Switching Device (OSSD) connections that directly communicate safety-stop commands to industrial robot safety controllers. Firmware execution runs on an embedded Rust-based deterministic stack, achieving a probability of dangerous failure per hour of less than 1.5 in ten million.

Within robotic palletizing safety, dynamic zone-switching traditionally relies on base-mounted 2D safety laser scanners (such as SICK microScan3, Keyence SZ-V, or Omron OS32C) programmed with multiple field sets triggered by robot joint encoder signals. While 2D planar scanners can cycle through up to 128 field sets as the robot swings between stations, they only monitor a flat horizontal slice, leaving vertical blind spots beneath elevated tooling and requiring physical barrier skirts to prevent personnel from crawling under or reaching over the scan plane. By deploying continuous 3D acoustic detection that rides with the upper arm casting, beRobox eliminates planar blind spots, prevents false optical trips caused by floating pallet dust or reflective poly films, and eliminates the need for bulky safety enclosures or floor-bolted laser pillars around compact end-of-line packaging cells.

Edited by Romila DSilva, Induportals Editor, with AI assistance.