Vision Sensor Lens Cleaning: How this vital part makes autonomous vehicles undefeatable!
A little mud makes autonomous and remotely used vehicles and weapons systems weak for Vision Sensor Lens Cleaning. Mud is just one of the many conditions these military vehicles face. The vehicles perform with all kinds of substances and conditions. Items like dust, oil, frost, snow, and mud disrupt the vision of lidar and cameras. With so many vision sensors and optic sights mounted on roofs and set around the vehicle, they are hard to access for cleaning.
Vision Cleaning
Sensors are perhaps out of reach on a deployed, remotely driven platform. Cleaning becomes a real problem, and the function of vision is weak. Clear visibility is vital, day and night. Human and machine vision support are critical for driving, automatic or operator-controlled weapons targeting, and sensing friend or foe. These states drive the need for a cleaning system that can restore and maintain clear vision.
The increase in sensors, autonomous systems, and machine vision creates a greater reliance on the uptime of such systems. Support systems that can keep these urgent functions active have equal importance but have been secondary to deploying many vision sensors in the field.
We can not omit cleaning because it is a vital support system.
Military Supplier
Nartron, a military supplier in Reed City, Michigan, has designed clever products and systems for solving tough jobs like the sensor cleaning issue.
In Nartron’s 50-year history, the company has built reliable military electronic and mechatronic hardware. The know-how behind these products is the company’s unique design DNA: Sense, Compute, and Control. Nartron’s knowledge of military and rugged electronics, fluid power, fluid dynamics, and heated washer fluid systems led to developing an answer for the lens cleaning challenge. This unique, versatile approach combines the most effective means of cleaning, dispensing, and control into a usable system that solves the problem.
CVSS-HAV-MIL
Clear Vision Safety System for Highly Automated Vehicles (CVSS-HAV-MIL) is a vision sensor–lens cleaning system capable of clearing defiled lenses rapidly. It’s a pressure wash for the dirty lens.
Lidar and Camera Sensors
The system’s on-demand pressurized fluid and air, dispensed at the precise sensor area, restore and support visibility. Lidar and camera sensors define cleaning.
Common Remotely Operated Weapons Station (CROWS) can be revised once the operational capability is affected. The clean cycle initiates on command for autonomous systems from the machine vision controller. Mixed options and fluids are possible, depending upon needs. Size, weight, and power (SWaP) are minimal. The system has an extensible design for integrating all vehicles and recent applications such as autonomous leader-follower systems, robotic squad-support platforms, and optics.
Sensor Lens Cleaning for CVSS-HAV-MIL
Leader-follower convoys put follower vehicles in direct line with dust and debris from lead vehicles. Sensors need cleaning to remain working. Optics on ground vehicles used for route clearance share harsh conditions and require regular cleaning. Even small robotic platforms like PackBot or TALON can benefit from variants of CVSS-HAV-MIL. These variants are self-contained, needing no power or support from the vehicle. These and many other instances stress the need for sensor lens cleaning and verify the matter of the answer, CVSS-HAV-MIL.
