Research on the sonar hardware system on an autonomous mobile robot/ Masakuni Michiue.

Abstract

The autonomous mobile robot, Yamabico-11. recognizes distance from obstacles by a transmit and receive sonar pair. However. the current sonar amplification has not been enough to obtain reliable range information. This thesis describes methods to improve the sonar analog circuits on the autonomous mobile robot so that they obtain more robust range information. One improvement was a change in the driving voltage of the transmit transducer from 5 volts to 12 volts which doubles the strength of sonar signal received by the pickup sensor. After changing the voltage source, it wa.., fouwi that there was spillover leakage directly from the transmitter to the receiver transducer. The amplifier sensitivity was decreased for the first one millisecond to reduce the spil!over.