Ok I've never played around with these sonar rangefinders all you guys have. This isn't so much a question of how do you use them but I'm curious to know what is the difference between them and the sonar used in boats and subs?
I mean they can just about give you Hd video of whats under your boat using sonar these days. What is in the transducer and I guess supporting hardware that allows this and is it adaptable to robotics? It seems to me that the power of sonar is underutilised if all you gonna get is, is there something 20 cm in front of me ? True or false. It's not much more than a walking stick for a sensor.
I guess if it were that easy it would have been done. Maybe the difference between water born sound waves and air is so different it makes it impractical? Or maybe I just haven't seen it yet. Can anybody offer any opinions about this?
I’ve considered that as well. The most general explaination I got was:"The performance of an imaging sonar—from the distance at which they can detect an object, to the clarity of the image, to the number of images they can display per second—are determined by a number of specifications, most notably the operating frequency, acoustic beamwidth and processing power and time to form an image… Generally speaking, a lower frequency increases the distance at which an image can be captured. A higher frequency and a smaller beamwidth used to map an object will deliver clearer images. The depth at which the sonar is deployed has no direct effect on how clearly an imaging sonar can capture a target."
