This year, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and 16 other departments jointly issued the "Robot+ Application Action Implementation Plan", aiming to expand the depth and breadth of robot applications through product innovation and scenario promotion. Enriching scenarios and increasing usage density has become a key focus in the robot industry.
Power line inspection, emergency rescue, and hazardous environment operations—these areas now see quadruped robots at work. But to really get these robots to do their jobs effectively, we first need to solve a problem: what should the robot's "eyes" rely on?
Tantu Zhixing's M360 LiDAR is exactly what we're talking about.
With Four M360s Installed, Robots Can See Their Surroundings Clearly
The principle of LiDAR is simple: emit lasers, receive reflected light, and calculate object distance through time difference. This technology is most commonly used in robot navigation and obstacle avoidance.
A power company recently showed me their situation. They deployed a quadruped robot in a substation to inspect equipment. The substation environment is complex, full of equipment, with some stair slopes reaching 45 degrees. The robot needs to climb up and down safely in such an environment while avoiding various obstacles, which is very challenging.
Their solution was simple: install 4 M360 LiDARs on the robot.
What are the benefits of this approach?
- First, M360 has a vertical field of view of 70 degrees, wider than many similar products on the market. Combined with a 360-degree horizontal field of view, it basically eliminates blind spots. Especially, M360's near-range detection can achieve 5 centimeters, much better than most products. This means the robot can detect obstacles close to the ground, which is particularly useful in narrow spaces.
- Second, with four radar sensors working together, the data fusion can cover the entire environment around the robot. For example, when climbing stairs, the front, sides, and even below can be simultaneously sensed, preventing the robot from stepping in the air or hitting obstacles.
Works Well in Heavy Rain, Strong Sunlight - Very Important
Industrial environments change a lot. Sometimes it's sunny and bright, sometimes it's dark at night, and sometimes it rains. In such environments, the robot's perception system can't afford to fail.
M360 performs well in this regard. LiDAR is not affected by lighting conditions, whether it's day or night, as long as it's not completely dark in extreme conditions, it can work normally.
More importantly, rainy weather situations. Traditional LiDARs perform poorly in rainy and foggy conditions because raindrops interfere with laser signals. But M360 has a dual-echo mode that can penetrate raindrops to see obstacles behind, while also being able to identify transparent objects like glass. This feature is particularly important in outdoor applications.
There's a practical application example that's very convincing. A while back, a hydropower station in southern China experienced three consecutive days of heavy rain, forcing manual inspections to be suspended, but the robot's inspection tasks continued. M360 remained stable in the rainy weather, ensuring normal inspection of power generation equipment.
Another feature is that M360's power consumption is very low, less than 4.5 watts. This means robots can use smaller batteries, or the same battery can last longer. This is very practical for industrial applications, since battery replacement or charging affects work efficiency.
M360 also has a built-in 6-axis IMU and supports PTP time synchronization. This allows the LiDAR's point cloud data and the robot's motion data to be precisely synchronized, which is very helpful for multi-sensor fusion.
From Power Plants to Disaster Sites - Various Scenarios Proven
M360's actual application cases are already numerous, mainly concentrated in several typical scenarios:
- Power Line Inspection: Robots can autonomously inspect generators, transformers and other equipment, transmitting data back to the control center in real time. In 500kV substations, robots need to pass through narrow equipment channels and climb for inspections, where M360's 5cm blind spot and wide field of view are crucial.
- Emergency Rescue: Earthquake, mining disaster, and fire scenes have the most complex environments, full of rubble and obstacles. But rescue robots need to find trapped people in such environments while ensuring they don't hit obstacles. M360's stability and penetration performance come into play here.
- Factory Warehousing: AGVs need to travel between shelves, often getting close to obstacles. This is where the 5cm blind spot advantage comes into play - many AGVs frequently hit shelf bottoms or small obstacles due to their larger blind zones.
- Ports and Mines: These environments are harsh, with heavy dust and large temperature variations. M360's IP67 protection rating ensures reliability in harsh environments, and its wide voltage range of 12-32V adapts to various vehicle power supplies.
In the past six months, M360 has served over 500 customers, from coastal substations in southern China to mines in northwestern regions, both domestically and internationally. The performance of robots in extreme environments depends largely on the reliability of their "eyes", and M360 has indeed proven itself.
If I had to say M360's biggest advantage, I think it's its practical orientation. It's not a product pursuing extreme parameters in a laboratory, but one designed for the actual needs of industrial sites: a 5cm blind spot, 4.5W power consumption, dual echo penetration, 12-32V wide voltage supply. These parameters directly affect robot reliability and total cost in real deployments.
Simply put, when robots need to work reliably in complex environments, M360 is indeed worth considering.