A NOVEL ELECTROOPTICAL PROXIMITY SENSOR FOR ROBOTICS - CALIBRATION AND ACTIVE SENSING

An electrooptical proximity sensor capable of measuring the distance a nd two-dimensional orientation of an object's surface is presented, Th e robustness of the sensor, targeted for utilization in robotic active sensing, is achieved via the development of a novel amplitude-modulat ed-based electrooptical transducer, an electronic-interface circuit th at provides very good noise immunity and a wide dynamic operating rang e, and an effective multiregion calibration process that significantly improves pose-estimations at near proximities. An experimental setup was designed and implemented for the development and verification of t he proposed proximity sensor in a simulated robotic environment, Exper imental results using a variety of calibrated surfaces and materials a re presented and discussed, It is shown that average accuracies of 0.0 1 mm and 0.03 degrees can be achieved, The robustness of the proximity sensor is also verified for potential use in grasping objects with a priori noncalibrated surfaces.