Ultrasonic imaging system for robots using an electronic scanning method

Abstract

SUMMARY This paper describes a primitive environment recognition system for advanced robots. The system can recognize the location, configuration and distribution of 3-D objects in an object space (4m×4m×2.5m) using an ultrasonic imaging method. As an experiment, we have tried to develop the recognition system for the distribution of standing persons. First, this system was tested by mechanical scanning in order to obtain a satisfactory result. Next, we have investigated the electronic scanning method. A transmitter built for testing was composed of twenty-one ultrasonic transducers (40 KHz) built into a 2-D array. The characteristics supported by measurements have agreed well with the theoretical results. Therefore, it has become clear that the ultrasonic imaging system using an electronic scanning method can be applied to environment recognition.