
There are a few obstacle detectors and rangefinders on the market, but are usually either very expensive or don't work
great outside (I am looking at you Kinect). We decided to try to make a product that it is cheap and rugged enough to be used outdoors.
Here are some parameters:
It is intended more for terestrial robots (is a bit slower than the laser rangefinders) .
Here is the link
Comment by Daniel Lukonis on August 27, 2014 at 12:13pm I love the cat!!!
Comment by Gary McCray on August 27, 2014 at 1:09pm Hi Harry,
This is an interesting development and certainly represents a price breakthrough for a scanning rangefinder.
But I do have a bit of difficulty with the 2 comparisons you made.
As I recall both of the other rangefinders have considerably more points in their scan and although the RPLidar / Neato scanner uses a distance angle offset similar to the Sharp sensor you are using it has greater range as well as more points.
And the Hokuyo LED scanner you referenced is the same price as the urg-04lx-ug01 real TOF laser scanner which has a much more useful 5.6 meter range.
All that said $200.00 is a very attractive price for a scanning rangefinder assuming it works reliably.
There have been reports that the Sharp range sensor module does not always give reliable results depending on the surface it is reflecting off of as well as ambient light and especially in direct sunlight.
Best regards,
Gary
Comment by Harry Olar on August 27, 2014 at 1:22pm Thanks Gary,
you are certanly right.While the performance of the other scanners are better , also they are more expensive.
Also we tweaked a bit the price and now it is $139 for a unit .
I think it is a great unit for small robots .And we offer software and support.
Thanks
Harry
Comment by Mark on August 27, 2014 at 2:52pm Looks interesting, the price is attractive as well - I have one concern and one dealbreaker for me... The concern I would have is that when I used those Sharp sensors in the past, I had problems with them in sunlight although they worked fine indoors. The dealkiller for more is the USB interface - I think that's cool if you're hooking it up to a computer, but it really should also have either an SPI or I2C interface, I would think either one would be simple enough to add, and then it gives me the ability to more tightly integrate it with the hardware. If you had I2C or SPI I'd pull the trigger, but in general the bots I build don't have USB hosts on them...
Comment by Mark on August 27, 2014 at 2:54pm And it would be nice to actually see some live video showing your prototype doing something... Show your app running on the computer, and the device, and move things around in front of it showing how well it does at detection, etc.
Comment by Harry Olar on August 27, 2014 at 2:55pm Hi Mark,
would a RS232(UART ) work for you. This is in interface that we were thinking about adding.

@Harry,
CAN bus is getting to be the way to go for peripherals as it has good noise immunity compared to RS232 or SPI/I2C.
Regards,
TCIII AVD
Comment by Harry Olar on August 27, 2014 at 3:11pm CAN bus is indeed better as immunity, but I am afraid that a lot of people might be put off by complexity, and also needing hardware.

@Harry,
I have worked with both the short and long range Sharp IR sensors and they were marginal in an outdoor environment at the speeds that our rovers were travelling at.
I suspect that they will work well indoors and I believe that your sensor will be perfect for that environment.
Regards,
TCIII AVD
Comment by Harry Olar on August 27, 2014 at 3:20pm Guys,
Thanks for information.
Any help that you can provide with the campaign , I would be deeply in debt to you.
Thanks
Harry
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