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  • Öncü Kayalar August 29, 2010 at 3:43pm
    http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/200110/vision.htm
    A Real-time Laser Range Finder
  • Mike August 29, 2010 at 9:57am
    Ryan will plough through my archives and try to dig it out for ya.

    Cheers,
    Mike
  • Developer
    Mark Colwell August 29, 2010 at 9:25am
    That would be a great unit except the he cost..$5000+ . I spent $40 on my Bushnel Sport 400, opened it up and found the com port (4 pads) I need to connect o'scope and protocol analyzer to discover commands. Should be able to get 1 Hz updates out. I was encouraged to try this after talking with Lattitude Eng. Group rep at AVUSI show.
  • Chris McNair August 29, 2010 at 8:47am
    Why not use this? http://www.procerusuav.com/Downloads/DataSheets/AeriusMiniatureLase...
  • Ryan August 29, 2010 at 3:55am
    Yep, I'd like to have a look at it...$2500 is not as bad as DGPS receiver
  • Mike August 29, 2010 at 3:45am
    A laser rangefinder for UAVs already exists, good range and update rate and accurate - weighs something silly like 35g but costs about $2,500 - its been around for a while but obviously at that price not the top of the shopping list. If anyone is interested in buying one I can maybe dig the link and emails out.
  • Developer
    Mark Colwell August 29, 2010 at 2:59am
    From AVUSI show, AGL Laser Altimeter based on Bushnel rangefinder is available from Latitude Engineering, for use with Piccolo Autopilots with firmware 2.0 uses RS-232 So it is possible and should work.
  • Hein August 29, 2010 at 2:58am
    Just read some reports that state tarmac is not the best due to the non reflective nature. It seems like these are not all equal, there are industrial ones available for either dark or light surfaces. Starting to think they might be too unreliable for unpredictable surface areas. There goes my surface hugging idea ...
  • Patrick Hammer August 29, 2010 at 2:15am
    Soething to keep in mind ........

    I've some [basic] experience trying to hack these DIY store type laser range finders at work, for use in single figure, and sub-single figure (degree) antenna positioning. Two difficulties appear common to many of the "budget" off-the-shelf laser range finders:

    - model movement over a certain rate (and it's a rate well well below what most model UAV's will be moving at), and they struggle to produce any meaningful calculation (distance)

    - laser reflection off surfaces - they tolerate very limited breakup of the reflected laser. A smooth tarmac/concreate landing surface may be okay, but anything like grass or sand and they run in problems.

    Then off course, as has been pointed out, there is the issue of update rate - which introduces a whole bunch of other limitations, which will eliminate most of them for inclusion in landing applications.

    Impossible - mmmmmm........ a lot of work me thinks.

    Patrick
  • Gerry Lichter August 29, 2010 at 1:51am
    I'm really excited for developments in software processing of 3d laser scanner panoramic images from digital video.

    Lots of proof of concepts in Matlab and such, but what's really needed is an OpenCV library and GUI for CAD data generation.
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