A new high performance multisonar system for fast mobile robots

A new type of actively sensing multisonar system for obstacle avoidance, localization and map updating in indoor environments has been developed. It is composed of 24 individual intelligent transmitter and receiver elements arranged on a horizontal plane around a fast motion platform. The physical sensor elements can be electronically configured for various types of task-directed and situation-adaptive virtual sensor arrays, for example, reliable measurement of wall orientation and distance or for tracking a walking person. The combination of virtual sensor data with a priori information about the mission and the environmental situation permits the sensor system to keep up with the data rate requirements of fast mobile platforms. Experimental tests with the developed multisonar system demonstrate its improved perception capabilities compared to the state-of-the-art