Implementation of the Laser Range Sensor Brick – Sick LMS 200

This project entitled " Implementation of the Laser Range Sensor BrickSick LMS 200" deals with the design and implementation of a sensor brick comprising the laser range sensor-LMS 200 manufactured by Sick as the major component of the brick for acquisition. This brick is expected to be an independent unit, capable of operating for various purposes. One of the major goals of devising such a brick is to incorporate it as a plug and play sensor for a modular robot. The brick can also be used for acquiring road profiles that can be used by concerned authorities for analyzing the road condition. Laser range sensor can be employed to measure the geometry of objects so as to obtain the three dimensional information about the object and the space around. It operates by sweeping a laser across a scene and at each angle measuring the range and the returned intensity. Range images are different from the images acquired by normal camera in a sense that a normal camera measures reflected light from the scene being observed and each pixel value of the obtained image represents the intensity of the reflected light value, whereas the pixel value of a range image represents the distance from the object being acquired by the camera. The sensor brick comprises a laser scanner (LMS 200 manufactured by the SICK company) for acquisition, micro ATX board (ASUS P4GE-VM) for preprocessing of the acquired range data and wireless network card (Linksys wireless-G) for communicating with the central control unit or server that controls the operation of the sensor brick. The power unit comprises PW-70A-MINI-ITX dc-to-dc converter for the motherboard, VILJ03-CY dc-to-dc converter for the Sick Scanner and a 12 V Panasonic LC-RA1212P battery.