On ultrasound transducers with EMFi material

In autonomous vehicles, e.g. mobile robots, the sonar is frequently used for navigation. There are some drawbacks of the system, generated mainly from the small bandwidth of the ultrasonic transducers and from high absorption of ultrasounds in air. Currently, there are two research directions under development: (a) the use of sensors based on new materials as EMFi, with wide frequency range; (b) the use of arrays of sensors, in order to design the beam width and to build sonar images instead of single or multiple echoes processing. The present work presents some results from the first directions and the preparations for the second approach, i.e. array of sensors, from electronics point of view. The work is part of the ADBIOSONAR research project.