Date of Publication :31st December 2017

Abstract: One of the recognition tools used in the robotic researches is the IR distance sensor. The main reason for choosing this sensor is the availability in the market and affordable price. Besides IR distance sensors, laser scanning rangefinder is the other solution. Laser scanners can also be easily accessible in the market but the price of them may not be reasonable for the engineering students and individual researchers. The important challenge in the use of IR sensor is the calibration. Before adopting it into a real system, a calibration system and procedure should be created. Then, the calibration parameters are to be integrated into the system. To make a contribution in this subject, a calibration tool for IR sensors is developed in this study. The system developed includes an IR sensor, a 4-wheeled mobile robot and a laser scanner range finder. The mobile robot is driven by 2 dc actuators equipped with high-resolution encoders. The control of the robot’s motion is achieved by the use of motor controllers, encoder interface card, microprocessor and a computer. The laser scanner is directly connected to the base computer where the related data decoding processes are performed. The data coming from IR sensor, which provides distance data up to 5m, is processed in the microprocessor. The integration of the subsystems gives the opportunity to calibrate the IR sensor. The steps of the methodology proposed are given in detail in this paper.

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