Flying Robots Equipped With 3D Sensors For Area Surveillance

We might soon be having Jetsons-like surveillance, with flying robots to monitor the area for us. This kind of surveillance is achieved using 3D imaging sensors fitted on the flying robots that also prevent them from crashing into each other.

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The flying bot

The sensors, created by researchers in Germany, use short pulses of light to identify the presence of objects surrounding them, which, as the researchers state, shall provide more elaborate information than the radar systems. The technology is so designed, that they could be easily fitted to the aerial bots, allowing a swarm of them to fly independently over events such as the soccer matches, or say transmitting images back to the control center of outbreaks of violence or criminal activity, etc. Werner Brockherde, HOD at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems (IMS) in Duisburg, stated that the sensors can compute 3D distances quite effectively, and that they have a higher local resolution as compared to radar.

The airborne bots with mounted sensors are efficient enough to pick out objects measuring 20cmx15cm at ranges as far as 7.5cm. Rate of image transmission is 12 images per second. SMOOTH! The sensors are assembled with CMOS circuit technology, similar to that present in mobile phone cameras, and they put to use the time-of-flight principle to calculate distance travelled by light. To avoid the bright ambient light from covering the signal, the electronic shutter of the signal remains open hardly for a few nano-seconds.