Step Detection by Sonar - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University

Step Detection by Sonar

Teruko Yata and Chuck Thorpe
Conference Paper, Proceedings of 18th Annual Conference of the Robotics Society of Japan, pp. 1325 - 1326, September, 2000

Abstract

Ultrasonic sensors are widely used for external sensors of mobile robots. However, information gotten by ultrasonic sensors were limited in two-dimensions, even though the environment is three-dimensions. In this paper, we propose to apply an accurate reflecting point measurement method into three-dimensional measurement, especially focusing on step detection. The proposed method uses a single transmitter and two receivers, and it achieves accurate reflecting point measurement in vertical direction using difference of measured time-of-flight by two receivers. Consequently, it becomes possible to estimate existence of step, distance to the step and also hight of the step by using the reflecting point.

Notes
This paper is partially written in Japanese.

BibTeX

@conference{Yata-2000-8104,
author = {Teruko Yata and Chuck Thorpe},
title = {Step Detection by Sonar},
booktitle = {Proceedings of 18th Annual Conference of the Robotics Society of Japan},
year = {2000},
month = {September},
pages = {1325 - 1326},
keywords = {Pulse-echo ultrasonic sensor, Reflecting point, Three-dimensional information, Accurate bearing measurement},
}