2D Surface Reconstruction Using an air-Coupled pMUT-Based Synthetic Aperture Array

This paper reports, for the first time, a synthetic aperture of pMUTs based on a hybrid Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT)-ScAlN pMUT arrangement for in-air 2D surface reconstruction. By physically moving the two chips before data capture, a larger array of dies at fixed spacings is synthesized with surface reconstruction performed using the envelope of ellipses algorithm. The proposed experimental system meets the requirements of low cost, wide Field of View (FoV) of 45°, and operability under any environmental condition as opposed to the state-of-the-art (camera, lidar, conventional large arrays of pMUTs), while offering high-resolution surface reconstructions (circa 98% mean range accuracy, reconstruction error less than 5mm), thus, constituting it the ideal solution for autonomous robotic navigation.