What is the RDS?

The RDS, as shown below, is a Robot Demonstration System that integrates computers, sensors, and other types of instruments for demonstration purposes.  The sensors include infrared, pan and tilt camera, omni-directional camera, sonar, and an acoustic eye.  The purpose of this is to provide a demonstration platform for the integration of these sensors.  The Senior Design team's task centered on the acoustic eye sensor, and to develop a collapsible housing for this device.

What is an Acoustic Eye?

An acoustic eye is similar to a human eye in that it "sees" a sound source by utilizing micro-processing as its brain to calculate differences in sound source reception by each individual microphone sensor.  Shown below is the original acoustic eye set-up as provided at the beginning of the project by Dr. Pfister at Eglin AFRL.