Implementation of a reliable 2D approximator using sonar

Sensors in cars can be used to detect an imminent collision. Where expensive cars are usually equipped with laser or radar technologies, cheap cars lack these technologies. A cheap but reliable solution to detect collisions is examined in this report. The solution includes four AMR sensors and three sonar sensors in combi- nation with a fault tolerant network of four PLASMA CPUs and will be investigated in project IMMORTAL. It consists of different parts with one being the central topic of this report, namely an approximator. Sonar sensors are part of an approximator and it is important to understand their degradation. An endurance test with a weekly data capture on a specified test setup, showed that the standard deviation remains the same after all stress tests. When included in the approximator, the resulting distance and angle of an object could be approximated closely when the object is in range.