ROVIBATs. Biomimetic Sonar Heads for Airborne Applications

The book presents a collection of research results, methods and ideas on airborne sonar heads. Mainly, there are results from the field of signal processing and electronic engineering applied to the development of the SONAR heads and based on biomimetic features. The name of the sonar heads is ROVIBAT-XX, which comes from ROmanian VIrtual BAT, and XX are two numbers to count the evolution. The rationale of the research comes from the fact that most SONAR heads used by mobile robots for navigation purposes are far of the similar performances used in nature, like in the case of bats. The new SONAR heads are inspired from the living world of animals, and have multiple degrees of freedom, corresponding to the different anatomic and functional parts: an emitter and two receivers. Each of those will be able to orient itself in a finite space. The transducers may be composed of one or multiple sensors (sensor arrays). Ultrasound imaging means representation in 2D (static images) or 3D (video or dynamic images) of the environment with the help of ultrasound waves. An element of the image has the intensity proportional to the received signal.