Use of amplitude of echo for environment recognition by mobile robots

This paper proposes a method attaching amplitude of ultrasound echo on reflecting points. A new omni-directional sonar, which we developed, can measure accurate distance and direction of the reflecting points, and it is possible to measure amplitude of the echo which corresponds to the reflecting points. We propose a method to add information from the amplitude of the echo on the reflecting points for environment recognition. This method can give useful information as like character of reflecting objects and it makes possible to corresponds each reflecting points with others using this information. We describe the proposed method and an experimental result to show its usefulness.