Abstract
In recent years, the authors studied the possibility of using low frequency in-air ultrasonic sensors in several applications of robotic interest related to the perception and the reconstruction of the external environment. They introduced several methods based on innovative mathematical tools for solving problems, such as the position detection and orientation of a mobile robot with respect to a corridor wall, the correct reconstruction of two orthogonal panels in spite of the effect of multiple reflections affecting the data in the corner zone, and the reconstruction of the boundary walls of a room environment. All the proposed innovative strategies were tested on a designed mechatronic scanning system consisting of ultrasonic sensors rotated by a servo modular actuator and also with the data from a scanning validated model. In this review, the main steps and achievements will be presented so as to summarize the research work of recent years as well as reflect on the importance of appropriate and innovative techniques regarding ultrasonic data processing. The originality of the present work concerns the possibility of disposing all the developed approaches as a whole in order to use in-air ultrasonic sensors for robotic perception in several environmental situations.
Highlights
An important challenge in the robotic research field is focused on the aim of perceiving the surrounding environ‐ ment and recognizing the obstacles; otherwise, it is difficult for a robot to avoid collisions.Expensive devices, such as laser sensors, infrared or camera systems, are often preferred for collecting information about the surrounding environment; these lightbased sensors are very accurate, they are not able to work in certain conditions, such as smoky rooms, or in the presence of light-absorbing or shining obstacles [1]
These sonar devices were firstly used for under‐ water measurements, they have subsequently been used for in-air measurements
The Time of Flight (TOF) values depend on the speed of sound, while digital signal processing techniques have proven to be a necessity for compensating the speed variations due to temperature or other atmospheric conditions [3]
Summary
An important challenge in the robotic research field is focused on the aim of perceiving the surrounding environ‐ ment and recognizing the obstacles; otherwise, it is difficult for a robot to avoid collisions Expensive devices, such as laser sensors, infrared or camera systems, are often preferred for collecting information about the surrounding environment; these lightbased sensors are very accurate, they are not able to work in certain conditions, such as smoky rooms, or in the presence of light-absorbing or shining obstacles [1]. The present article involves recently published studies and summarizes all the significant findings in a unique contribution They realized an array of four ultrasonic sensors moved by a digital modular actuator [4] and utilized it to scan corners, planes, corridors and rooms [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]; the reconstruction algorithms used the digital sonic signals and the analogue full-waveforms. The proposed reconstruction strategies could be applied in many industrial robotic applica‐ tions as well, where the use of in-air ultrasonic sensors is undoubtedly more advisable or necessary (e.g., a welding robot for joining two flat surfaces operating in smoky environments)
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