Sonar
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Sonar (Sound Navigation and Ranging) is a sensing technology that measures distances by emitting sound pulses and detecting their echoes from surrounding surfaces. In robotics, sonar sensors — particularly ultrasonic rangefinders — provide robots with spatial awareness by measuring the time-of-flight of acoustic signals to calculate distances to nearby obstacles and surfaces. These measurements are used to construct occupancy grid maps, support simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), enable autonomous exploration, and guide real-time navigation in unknown environments. Sonar is especially valuable in underwater robotics, where acoustic sensing is the dominant perception modality for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) performing hull inspection or seabed exploration. On land-based mobile robots, sonar is frequently fused with infrared, stereo vision, or other sensor modalities to improve mapping accuracy and robustness. Sonar matters because it offers a low-cost, reliable means of perceiving environments where cameras or lasers may struggle, and it laid much of the foundational groundwork for modern probabilistic mapping and localization methods that remain central to autonomous robot navigation today.
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Sensor Fusion in Certainty Grids for Mobile Robots
Hans Moravec
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Visual simultaneous localization and mapping: a survey
Jorge Fuentes-Pacheco, J. Ruiz-Ascencio, Juan Manuel Rendón-Mancha
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Directed Sonar Sensing for Mobile Robot Navigation
John J. Leonard, Hugh Durrant‐Whyte
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Simultaneous map building and localization for an autonomous mobile robot
John J. Leonard, Hugh Durrant‐Whyte
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Visual Navigation for Mobile Robots: A Survey
Francisco Bonin‐Font, Alberto Ortiz, Gabriel Oliver
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Advancements in the field of autonomous underwater vehicle
Avilash Sahoo, Santosha K. Dwivedy, P. S. Robi
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Robust Mapping and Localization in Indoor Environments Using Sonar Data
Juan D. Tardós, José Neira, Paul Newman, John J. Leonard
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Adaptive Mobile Robot Navigation and Mapping
Hans Jacob S. Feder, John J. Leonard, Christopher M. Smith
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Data Fusion and Sensor Management: A Decentralized Information-Theoretic Approach
James Manyika, Hugh Durrant‐Whyte
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Development and experimental validation of an adaptive extended Kalman filter for the localization of mobile robots
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Integrating grid-based and topological maps for mobile robot navigation
Sebastian Thrun, Arno Bü
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Physically Based Simulation Model for Acoustic Sensor Robot Navigation
Roman Kuc, Mel Siegel
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Mobile Robot Sonar for Target Localization and Classification
Lindsay Kleeman, Roman Kuc
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Mobile Robot Localization Using Sonar
Michael Drumheller
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Topological mapping for mobile robots using a combination of sonar and vision sensing
David Kortenkamp, Terry E. Weymouth
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Advanced perception, navigation and planning for autonomous in-water ship hull inspection
Franz S. Hover, Ryan M. Eustice, Ayoung Kim, Brendan Englot, Hordur Johannsson, Michael Kaess, John J. Leonard
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