Finding obstacles ahead

[vsriharsha]

Hello, I am building a bot, about 1 foot high and am implementing an autonomous navigation algo for it to move around our campus.
I want a method/system that detects objects (anything from a small chair to carton box or just about anything that can block its way).

I initially thought that fixing an IR transceiver at the top of the bot will allow me to detect an obstacle, but then I realized that the obstacles could be of any size/shape, so if it does not have anything solid at the same height as the IR transceiver, then it cannot be detected.

My next idea is to use an IR beam, project it onto an appropriate collimator (a lens that disperses an incident beam into equal parallel beams) and read the responses to determine if an object exists. But, I have no clue on how to do this.
Did anyone use this method or know about it? Or can anyone suggest a better method?

Regards,
VSH.

[hlreed]

Give me an email address and I will send you a book that might help
in object detection. The book is Neurrons for Robots and it is in
MS Word format.