8ToF | 360° Time of Flight Sensor (beta)

*Note: These are currently being sold as Beta Units

Ascend-8ToF is a compact 360° time-of-flight obstacle-sensing board. The 8TOF streams a live 512-point distance cloud over a single wire, so your aircraft can map, avoid, and fly safely indoors, in the dark, and in GPS-denied spaces.

360° obstacle avoidance for any flight controller

The 8TOF plugs directly into your FCU OR your onboard computer. 

Key specifications

• Coverage: continuous 360° horizontal ring
• Point cloud: 512 points per sweep (8 sensors × 8×8 zones)
• Update rate: 15 Hz (~7,680 measurements/second)
• Range: ~4 m reliable · ~45° field of view per sensor
• Interface: plain ASCII 8×8 distance matrices over UART (~921,600 baud, 8N1)
• Processor: STM32H5-family MCU with onboard sensor multiplexing
• Power: single DC input, 5 V up to a 6S LiPo (or 5 V USB-C), <500 mA typical
• Compatibility: any flight controller or companion computer (ModalAI VOXL 2 worked example)

Two firmware modes

Sensor stream (stable): human-readable distance matrices over UART, ready to feed your own mapping, SLAM, or avoidance stack on PX4, ArduPilot, ROS, or custom code.

ACO onboard collision avoidance (beta): avoidance runs on the board itself and speaks MAVLink v2 straight to your flight controller — steering the drone around obstacles in Position and Mission modes with no companion computer required.

Engineered by drone people

Ascend Engineering builds production autonomy hardware and are upstream contributors to PX4 and QGroundControl. The 8ToF is designed to drop into a real airframe — a simple, host-agnostic distance stream with no proprietary ecosystem to buy into.

Give your drone eyes on every side. Add the Ascend-8ToF to your platform, or contact us about volume and fleet integration.

Read the 8TOF documentation here