Contactless Environment Map Construction with Ultrasonic Sensors

This paper presents a contactless environment mapping system for autonomous navigation of mobile robots. Based on ultrasonic sensing, the proposed system obtains reliable and accurate maps of unknown environments without the need of physical contact and regardless of the scene’s illumination. These maps include the location of obstacles and objects in the environment; therefore, they can be used for autonomous navigation and trajectory planning of mobile robots. This paper introduces the design, implementation, and preliminary results showing feasibility of the proposed system.