MINNEAPOLIS, MINN., FEBRUARY 3, 2020 – Every year, Control Engineering honors new products in automation, control, and instrumentation technology markets with the Engineers’ Choice Awards (ECA). The ECA program is an annual reader-choice program, created to provide Control Engineering readers with information about top new products in the industry.
This year, SICK’s outdoorScan3 was named an honorable mention for the Safety – Machine Safety category by Control Engineering readers. The outdoorScan3 is the first safety laser scanner certified to IEC 62998 for use in outdoor applications. This makes it the first ever outdoor safety laser scanner of its kind on the market.
What is the outdoorScan3?
The outdoorScan3 allows automated guided vehicle (AGV) systems to navigate safely through outdoor industrial environments. Thanks to its innovative outdoor-safeHDDM® scanning technology, outdoorScan3 works safely and reliably in all weather – sun, rain, snow, or fog – thus closing a major gap in the automation of industrial processes. This technology means the laser scanner can work without errors when exposed to sunlight with an illumination intensity of up to 40,000 lux.
In addition, the intelligent software algorithm of the outdoorScan3 detects rain and snow, easily filtering out these environmental influences. For example, rain up to a precipitation intensity of 10 mm/h can be filtered out. Even in fog with a meteorological visual range of up to 50 m, the outdoorScan3 detects all obstacles with total reliability, due to its special fog function.
AGV systems facilitate a flexible and productive material flow and will be a key technology in automation concepts of the future. However, these systems can only be used in a working environment shared by humans and machines with the presence of safety laser scanners. With the outdoorScan3, AGV systems will be able to perform tasks outdoors – with no physical partitions whatsoever and without having to significantly lower their speed.
