Imager camera and TOF sensor

Posted in Roadmap by Giorgio on 16 October 2023

The Imager, that is to say, the top part (or head) of the Mast Tower is the key that justifies the existence of the tower itself: elevating the main rover camera, giving it rotation freedom in all directions. At its current state, Continuity's Imager is equipped with a 1080p camera and a couple of 10120 TOF sensors. A TOF (Time of Flight) is a sensor commonly used on drones due to its extremely low weight. It allows the rover to estimate in real-time the distance between the sensor and an object counting the time light takes to go back and forth from it. Since its precision is not always ensured, I installed a couple of them for redundancy and to get an average of their measurements, obtaining a more reliable value. There is still plenty of space inside the Imager, but this is fine because this will not be its final look, and many parts still need to be improved: for instance, the height of the Mast Tower, which risks being too high compared to the rover centre of mass.

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