A nice project to test the newly available Open-Cube sensor – a laser rangefinder based on the “U85B” module extracted from the commercial handheld Asist LM030. The sensor uses a red visible point laser, so it is very suitable for some maze mapping tasks, for example, because it is not blocked by nearby objects like other distance sensors with a large field of view. The range is from 1 cm to about 10 m depending on the conditions (external lighting, target reflectivity…). In this case, a small LEGO EV3 motor is used to rotate the compact mirror, so the entire 360° area can be scanned. An additional optical sensor is used to reference the mirror position.
Thanks to this project, we were able to test several new features implemented in Open-Cube – I2C communication between multiple O-Cs, wireless code upload in micropython, and more.
Authors: Václav Poustka and David Steinmann, 2nd year of bachelor studies, Cybernetics and Robotics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague
