SONAIR Ultrasonic Range Finders

Rangefinders, particularly SONAIRS, constitute an important part of new robot sensory systems. We review the different measuring techniques. The attained performances depend mostly on the: physical properties of the air and ultrasonic transducerselectronic and its coupled microprocessingmovment of SONAIR in the discovery of its surrounding. Some of them are contradictory. We must make a good compromise. We present our choices in our field of application: the mobile robot sensory equipment and those of the 3D synthetic vision system. In order to improve their performances, we conclude our paper by considerations on the ideal transducers that would be produced industrially and we present the concept of multisensory range finding systems using the present possibilities of optics and acoustics.