Development of Two Sensor Technologies targeted for use in Robots by NSK
NSK made an announcement on development of two kinds of sensor technologies targeted for use in human assisting robots. The two sensor technologies are proximity sensor and a real time conical scan sensor. The proximity sensor was developed for obstacle avoidance in human assisting robots, the sensor is capable of detecting the distance and centered position of a target to the front all in real time by utilizing various linearly arranged sensing elements.The elements simply detect obstacle by reflected light of emitting LED light.
The sensor is capable of obtaining information from various sensing elements with minimum amount of wiring. The sensor’s response time is under 1msec.
The sensor was made flexible through making of the mounting substrate from a pliable material. On the other hand the real-time conical scan sensor was developed to enable robots to move safely through recognition of the geometry and slope of the route surface. The conical scan in this sensor is the method to process the distance data from the rangefinder as the scanning trajectory drawing the conical shape. This will provide the means to calculate the position and orientation of the target’s surface from the distance data which corresponds to the scan angle. The key feature of this sensor is the algorithm that has been used for real-time processing of the conical scan data to quickly assures the route geometry.
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