In the proposed Industrial Experiment (IE), a possible new application domain for Terabee range sensors is explored, with the ambition of testing a novel multi-sensors system. This novel multi-sensors system is called the TeraRanger Hub, and allows to connect up to 8 TeraRanger sensors enabling a scan of a larger portion of the environment. Designed for robotics and drone operation to allow complex application such as navigation or obstacle avoidance, these sensors are lightweight, low-power and deliver high precision and high performance output.

In this IE, the wearable application is targeted as a demonstration domain. A prototype device featuring the Terabee sensors and targeting an IMU platform (such as iNEMO from STMicroelectronics) will be assembled. The purpose of this device is to scan the environment in a robust and consistent way in order to raise alerts to prevent collision for users or drone carrying it in environments where vision is not reliable (fog, night, smoke, etc.).

The expertise for implementing multi-sensor fusion will be provided by the CEA as a competence partner for this IE. This fusion software will have to match the Hardware specifications of a standard inertial platform. This platform features a comprehensive Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) that will be used to track user’s movements.

Even if this IE is a good opportunity for Terabee to evaluate its product in a new application domain, its outcome will also be applicable to the main domains of Terabee, and especially for drone and robotics application. These ones are also constrained domain where sensors are moving in the space, as well as the platform (e.g. drone or robot) and has to detect its own displacement (e.g. IMU or GPS).

At the end of the project, a running prototype will be demonstrated in an international event. The main expected results of the project are: re-usable firmware code for the integration of IMU and Terabee range sensors, a prototype with the integration of the HUB sensor and a DUO sensor. It is underlined that those results can easily be exploited in several application domains.).