Distributed smart sensor system for low cost mobile robots

A robust and reliable sensor system is the enabling technology for automation processes. Especially in the field of mobile robots, a high performance perception system is required to cope with an unknown environment. While many approaches are based upon vision systems where an expensive signal processing is required, this paper describes new development results in the field of ultrasonic sensors to meet the low cost requirements of a sensor system. To acquire detailed information about the environment, a design method for application specific ultrasonic sensors based upon a beam forming technique and a high performance ultrasonic scanner has been developed. To allow the co-operation between a variety of different sensors, a distributed architecture has been implemented on the base of CAN field bus components. The system is characterised by a high flexibility of possible measurement sequences and a variety of sensors that can be connected to the system. The technology has been applied t o mobile service robots and mobile inspection robots.