For most of the week I have been looking into sensors with my team to make final determinations for what should be used for our blind spot sensor. At the time of my last status report we were looking into a mix of long range single point LIDAR sensor and ultrasonic sensors, so I started the week by coming up with a possible arrangement for an array of sensors that used two of each kind. This arrangement is can be seen in document V2: V2SensorPlacementLIDARULTRA
However, following a suggestion for the use of a 24GHz microwave sensor from Jason, and some research into that solution and discussion of the pitfalls and merits of all solutions we had discussed prior to it, we decided to make our primary solution an array of at least two microwave sensors which we filled out the form to order during class on Wednesday. I have since been familiarizing myself with how that sensor presents distance information. It appears as though the sensor will allow us to determine the distances of multiple objects, but not their particular look directions. With two sensor this means that though we can cover our entire FOV as the sensors have a 3db beam width of 78 degrees, the most information we can give back to the user is which sensor detected the object. However, this still allows us to tell the user if something is behind them to the right or left. Further, by looking at a possible overlapped area of the sensors, a third sector for objects seen by both sensors could be achieved. Some of my initial thoughts into the example code provided by the manufacturer for multi-object detection and a basic layout of the signals processing code to handle information can be seen in document V3: V3ManCodeCustomCodeStructureMicrowave
Me and my teammates are planning to get together later today to edit/create our design presentation slides and I hope to also determine with Jason who is in control of the device drivers what language we plan to use so that I can code up most of the signals processing code this week. Possibly with the exception of the code to filter out any “noise” from the ground as some baseline data from the sensors will be useful before adding that section.