Ultrasonic Proximity Sensor

As a final project for university mechatronics course, I made a rudimentary 3d scanner using an ultrasonic sensor.

Previously, I had messed around with 3D plots in MATLAB and this was a decent reason to utilize 3d visualization.

The course, although theoretical information was new like filtering circuits and op-amps, the practical section is pretty intro-level. Ig that’s to be expected for a mechanical engineer undergrad introductory course. Easy grad atleast.

This project is entirely Arduino, coded to move to servo angle, stop, average sample ultrasonic data, display it as part of a long comma-separated output, then repeat for all angles in a dome pattern.

I pulled a 3d model from Thing verse that does this exact project, but they used different motors. So I ended up jamming in my micro servos

Data is pulled from the Arduino with an external terminal program and exported directly into MATLAB. Angle information and ultrasonic data is pulled, calculated into cartesian coordinates, and plotted in MATLAB’s 3d scatter plot to make a super accurate plot that perfectly represents the world around it, ready to protect self-driving cars from little running kids…

Yea… its a ultrasonic sensor. Reflected material, angle of reflection, and distance falloff impacts data a lot so you can note how noisy data gets once it sees me or the ceiling

Impractical. But quite cool watching it record data.

And rotating the graph and seeing vague detections of things in my room.