The performance of a commonly employed linear array of sonar sensors is assessed for point-target localization. Two different methods of combining time-of-flight information from the sensors are described to estimate the range and azimuth of the target: pairwise estimate method and the maximum likelihood estimator. The biases and variances of the methods are investigated and their combined effe...

The history of beamforming in sonar applications goes back many years. Perhaps Collodon and Sturm’s use of a horn receiver in their 1826 measurement of the speed of sound in water is a first example. Their 13-km range certainly required a receiver with a good beam pattern to increase the signal to a measureable level. Although receivers have changed over the years, beamforming is still an activ...

The long-term goals of this project are to develop techniques, which can be used in the design of AUV’s to minimize the radiated noise. The self noise from an AUV can interfere with acoustic sensors on board the AUV, specifically acoustic modem sensors and other sonar equipment. Hence the reduction of AUV noise and structural vibration is essentail in increasing the reliability of operation of ...

It is important to get information about obstacles to avoid collision for a natural and smooth movement for fish robots. In this paper, we propose an IR sensor-based measurement system which gets information about obstacles for underwater fish robots. Due to complexity and space restriction, IR distance sensors are installed instead of cameras or sonar systems. Much importance is given to the n...

We present an approach for indoor mapping and localisation with a mobile robot using sparse range data, without the need for solving the SLAM problem. The paper consists of two main parts. First, a split and merge based method for dividing a givenmetric map into distinct regions is presented, thus creating a topologicalmap in ametric framework. Spatial information extracted from this map is the...

The evidence grid representation was formulated at the CMU Mobile Robot Laboratory in 1983 to turn wide angle range measurements from cheap mobile robot-mounted sonar sensors into detailed spatial maps. It accumulates diffuse evidence about the occupancy of a grid of small volumes of nearby space from individual sensor readings into increasingly confident and detailed maps of a robot’s surround...

Person following with mobile robots has traditionally been an important research topic. It has been solved, in most cases, by the use of machine vision or laser rangefinders. In some special circumstances, such as a smoky environment, the use of optical sensors is not a good solution. This paper proposes and compares alternative sensors and methods to perform a person following in low visibilit...

In this study, Bug1, Bug2, and DistBug motion planning algorithms for mobile robots are simulated and their performances are compared. These motion planning algorithms are applied on a Pioneer mobile robot on the simulation environment of MobileSim. Sonar range sensors are used as the sensing elements. This study shows that mobile robots build a new motion planning using the bug’s algorithms on...

A blind navigational aid has been implemented that utilizes a multi directional sonar system for obstacle detection and an electronic compass for traveler heading detection. The system controls and gathers information from the sensors in real-time and presents the navigational information using a 3D audio interface based on Head Related Transfer Functions. This paper describes the hardware and ...