This paper presents an ultrasonic sensor made up of
several transducers located on various different
horizontal planes, designed for navigation and
localisation applications in the mobile robot (MR) field.
The sensor proposed is equipped with an emitter and
nine receivers. The times-of-flight (TOF) provided by
the transducers enable the two types of basic reflectors
(planes and edges) to be classified. The system may be
easily extended to include two emitters and fourteen
receivers in order to identify corners. Optimal
classification of the reflectors will facilitate both
localisation of the mobile robot and the generation of
environment maps that are useful for navigation tasks.
The innovation with this sensor as regards prior papers in
this field lies in the high degree of redundancy that it
provides, which greatly facilitates the detection of
erroneous measurements caused by false reflections, and
in the simplicity of the classification algorithm used,
which gives it a low computational load.
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