My research is into the development of ultrasonic sensing systems for mobile robot navigation. Bats use echolocation to build auditory maps of their environment and to track prey. The goal of my research is to extract information from the echoes of ultrasonic chirps in order to classify objects and to determine their location.

We are attempting to characterise the effect of object features (surfaces, corners, texture, etc) on the sonar echo, and to extract that information from the received signal. From these object features, we build auditory maps of the environment.

Research and development projects include:

• Validation of a forward model of backscatter and the derivation of its inverse
  
• Development of CTFM sensors in conjunction with Professor Leslie Kay
  
• Pattern recogniton techniques to recognise plants for landmark navigation
  
• Environment mapping using acoustic features
  
• Data fusion to combine information from several sensors into maps
  
• Measuring the 3D location of objects (range, bearing and elevation)
  
• Visualisation of wave motion using the Latice Gas Model
  
• Learning of Fuzzy rule sets for indoor navigation
  
• Fuzzy maps for landmark navigation
  
• Acoustic flow for object tracking

A number of Research students are working on these projects.

Robots

Ultrasonic Sensors

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