Application of Infrared sensor for shape detection

This paper describes the use of multiple Infrared sensors to reconstruct a shape by detecting any changes in sensor displacement when there is an obstacle placed in front of the sensor. Meanwhile, the distance between IR sensors and the obstacle was set at 5 cm to minimize the noise contributed by the reflection of the sensor during data collection. A stepper motor was used in the experimental design to control the movement of an obstacle which rotates at 3600 for one complete cycle. Additionally, Arduino Software was used as a micro controller to control the switching mode of the sensor and CoolTerm Software was used to store the sensor output data in the text file format. For analysis, Matlab Software has been used to plot the graph of sensor value against the collected data. IR sensors are capable in measuring data up to 0.05 cm of resolution in displacement. Experimental results showed that by using IR sensors, it is possible to reconstruct a shape via plotting the graph for cylinder, hemisphere and ellipse shape obstacles.