I’m reading an article on a military robot and it mentions something called a “Flash Laser Scanner” that can be used for obstacle detection. A thorough Google of this didn’t come up with anything except a device that reads bar codes.
Has anyone heard of this sensor? Do you know how to use it to detect obstacles?
Thanks
Jared
I believe it refers to a 360 degree laser scanner. Such as the ones used for surveying and mapping. Obstacle avoidance would be 1 of many things you could do with the output. A flash scanner would take periodic readings. either seconds apart or minutes.
Basically a fancy IR detector.
Here are some examples of mapping abilities with a rotating laser scanner.
Here is a cheap home made one.
muellerr.ch/engineering/lase … efault.htm
A more expensive 180 degree model. Most are 360 deg.
pages.drexel.edu/~kws23/tuto … /sick.html
A quality 3d Laser scanner starts around $3000, but the mapping possibilities are impressive.
Thanks evolution. That home made one looks really cool.
As I was watching the DARPA Urban Challenge last week I noticed that every single robot they showed up close had a few of the SICK laser scanners up front.
Too bad the cheapest one is around $5000. Otherwise, it would make a great sensor for the people of this forum on our medium-large sized mobile robots.
The interface to the microcontroller would be a simple RS-232 connection. Looks like it would be really fun to play with.
There are $2000 reverse-engineering laser scanners that can be adapted to mapping and obstacle avoidance.
There are a few homemade ones floating around as well.
