The SONAR sensor

We have been working with a sonar sensor and you can see Larry testing it on the bench in his blog article with a video.

The Sonar Arrives

The sensor arrives

Getting a sense of the scale

Mounting the Sensor

In the meantime, I am building a sensor mast and looking for ways to mount the device to a servo.  I settled for a couple of plastic bushings used for running cable through drywall.  I connected them with an aluminum tube which gave me a nice snug fit.

I was able to fasten the bushing to the servo with a couple of machine screws with hex nuts.  Then I attached two brackets for mounting the sensor on the top of my mast.  It was a quick job but my part list came out to less than $4 which is nice.  Because hardware store parts tend to be fairly hefty I may decide to cut some light sheet metal and fabricate my own mechanism for the final sensor mast assembly.

Sitting on top of his mast, he looks like he has ears.

The best part about the white plastic bushings is that they are light and combined with the aluminum tube joining them together (hidden) it keeps the weight down.

Quick Mounts for Testing

Any prototyping engineer worth his salt needs to shell out a little money for some legos.  In 20 minutes or less you can build almost any structure needed for testing.  It is like modeling clay for geeks.

In this case, I wanted something we could set on the edge of the chassis.  With a few legos and some Velcro tape we fixed the SONAR very easily.

Legos should be in your toolbox

Another view of the Lego sensor mount

Now if we can get the SONAR tuned, we should be able to try autonomous collision avoidance.

~P.