Phlux Technology
Pittsburgh, PA
About Phlux Industrial robots are fast, heavy, and unforgiving, so they get fenced off. The devices that guard them - light curtains, laser scanners, safety mats - mostly protect a flat plane or a patch of floor, which forces a big rectangular cage around the machine, eats floor space, and halts production every time somebody steps too close. We build a 3D safety sensor that changes the shape of that problem, literally. It monitors a programmable three-dimensional protection zone around a robot, detects in real time when someone enters it, and drives safety outputs wired into the customer's safety controller. Safety itself is table stakes - every plant already has to meet it. What a 3D zone adds is flexibility: cells shaped to the actual work instead of a rectangle, people and robots far closer together, less floor space, and far fewer stoppages. We're a small, NSF-funded team in Pittsburgh. We've deployed units, tested them with real customers, and have more in front of us -...
