Proceedings of the 1993 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems Yokohama, Japan July 26-30,1993 DEVELOPMENT OF A ROBUST ELECTRO-OPTICAL PROXIMITY SENSOR

Abstract

The development of a robust fiber-optic proximity sensor is presented. A method is proposed by which to solve tli-oblem of robustness of amplitude- and phase-modulated electro optical proximity sensors to variations in surface-reflection characteristics, and to r educe t he influence of distance and orientation measurements on one other. The method comprises three different methodologies, which are combined for better efficiency: integration of distance and orientation sensors, a novel polarization-based optical-filtering approaeh, and active sensing. Emphasis is given to unique solutions for background-noise interference and dynamic-range-limitation problems. s,