Implementation and evaluation of HexEYE: a distributed optical proximity sensor system

A novel optical proximity sensor system, HexEYE, capable of measuring the distance to, the orientation of, and the curvature at a local area of object surface has been designed and evaluated for robotic application. This paper presents: 1) the implementation of distance mapping from raw data based on a multilayer backpropagation neural network; 2) the hardware and software implementation of a single sensing unit; and 3) the experimental evaluation under various surface conditions. A prototype of a single sensing unit has been built with commercially available parts.