A new high Performance Multisonar System for Fast Mobile Robot Applications

Publisher Summary A new, high-performance multisonar system for applications with fast (2 m/s) omnidirectional mobile robots has been developed. Twenty-four transmitter and receiver elements are arranged in a horizontal plane around a mobile robot and constitute a homogeneous construction set to form transmitting and receiving arrays. Depending on mission and situation, the individual elements are combined to form several heterogeneous virtual-sensing arrays, each designed for carrying out a given task. Virtual sensors are aimed electronically—that is, there is no need for moving parts. High-frequency firing schemes exploit a priori information about the current environment to purposefully collect data in a surveillance area of 8.6 m in diameter. This makes the proposed system superior to those with fixed data-gathering schemes. The results of experiments underline the system's improved perception capabilities in detecting obstacles during motion. Other tests demonstrate sonar localization results that are in good accordance with data from a laser navigation system.

[1]  Günther Schmidt,et al.  Real-Time Knowledge Acquisition and Control of an Experimental Autonomous Vehicle , 1986, IAS.

[2]  William R. Hamel,et al.  Autonomous Navigation, Exploration, and Recognition Using the HERMIES-IIB Robot , 1987, IEEE Expert.

[3]  S. Walter,et al.  The sonar ring: Obstacle detection for a mobile robot , 1987, Proceedings. 1987 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[4]  Angelo M. Sabatini.  Active Hearing For External Imaging Based On An Ultrasonic Transducer Array , 1992, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[5]  Toshio Fukuda,et al.  Dynamically reconfigurable robotic system , 1988, Proceedings. 1988 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[6]  R. Kuc,et al.  Bat-like sonar for guiding mobile robots , 1992, IEEE Control Systems.

[7]  David Kortenkamp,et al.  Integrated Mobile-Robot Design-Winning the AAAI 1992 Robot Competition , 1993, IEEE Expert.

[8]  Michael Drumheller,et al.  Mobile Robot Localization Using Sonar , 1987, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[9]  Shin'ichi Yuta,et al.  Ultrasonic Sensing For A Mobile Robot To Recognize An Environment - Measuring The Normal Direction Of Walls - , 1992, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[10]  Roman Kuc,et al.  Physically Based Simulation Model for Acoustic Sensor Robot Navigation , 1987, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[11]  Yoram Koren,et al.  Noise rejection for ultrasonic sensors in mobile robot applications , 1992, Proceedings 1992 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[12]  Federico Thomas,et al.  Set membership approach to the propagation of uncertain geometric information , 1991, Proceedings. 1991 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.