Ultrasonic surface profile determination by spatial voting

A novel spatial voting scheme is described for surface profile determination based on multiple ultrasonic range measurements. Spatial voting relies on the number of votes accumulated in each pixel of the ultrasonic arc map but ignores neighboring relationships. This approach is extremely robust, flexible, and straightforward. It can deal with arbitrary numbers and configurations of sensors as well as synthetic arrays, with the intrinsic ability to suppress spurious readings, crosstalk, and higher-order reflections, and process multiple reflections informatively. The performance of the method is investigated on various examples involving both simulated and experimental data. The effect of varying the surface roughness is also considered.