
Ultrasound sensor good for 3D echolocation
The ultrasound sensor unit operates at 40kHz and has a range of about 5m with precision of +/-2mm and +/-2 degrees of angle.
It sends out signals across a 160-degree by 160-degree, field with a scan rate of 28Hz and an array of microphones records the echoes and builds an image of the sensor’s vicinity. This is suitable for cars backing and parking and home cleaning robots and other delivery/service robots.
The sensor is based Toposens’ SoundVision1 chip. The TS3 returns up to 200 points per second with each 3D point corresponding to the cartesian coordinates and an additional volume measurement of the ultrasound wave’s echo returned by an object’s surface.
Along with the TS3 sensor, Toposens offers a feature rich toolkit for the Robotics Operating System (ROS) middleware making the sensor easy to integrate into pre-existing systems and enabling fast prototyping for high-level navigation capabilities. The team is currently working on adding advanced decision-making algorithms to their software and complimentary tutorial stack.
“Engineers can easily add it to their sensor stacks to replace or complement their existing optical sensing systems, providing both redundancy and an improved level of accuracy compared to standard ultrasonic sensors in various autonomous navigation applications,” said Tobias Bahnemann, managing director of Toposens, in a statement.
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