There is currently an interest in developing mobile sensing platforms that fly indoors. The primary goal for these platforms is to be able to successfully navigate a building under various lighting and environmental conditions. There are numerous research challenges associated with this goal, one of which is the platform’s ability to detect and identify the presence of transparent barriers. Transparent barriers could include windows, glass partitions, or skylights. For example, in order to successfully navigate inside of a structure, these platforms will need to sense if a space contains a transparent barrier and whether or not this space can be traversed. This project’s focus has been developing a multimodal sensing system that can successfully identify such transparent barriers under various lighting conditions while aboard a mobile platform. Along with detecting transparent barriers, this sensing platform is capable of distinguishing between reflective, opaque, and transparent barriers. It will be critical for this system to be able to identify transparent barriers in real-time in order for the navigation system to maneuver accordingly. The properties associated with the interaction between various frequencies of light and transparent materials were one of the techniques leveraged to solve this problem.

Date Published: 2 April 2015
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 9431, Active and Passive Smart Structures and Integrated Systems 2015, 94310V (2 April 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2084092

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9431:
Active and Passive Smart Structures and Integrated Systems 2015
Wei-Hsin Liao, Editor(s)