Comparison the Ultrasonic Distance Sensor with the Lidar in Different Conditions

Distance measurement can be performed basically by two types of sensors. The first type is ultrasonic sensor, which uses sound waves with a frequency of 40 kHz to measure distance. Second type is lidar, laser-based optical ranging sensor. The main idea in this study is to compare two types of distance sensor for the different distances between 50 cm–300 cm. Additional parameters are environment: laboratory and natural, surfaces: wall and glass in front of the wall. All tests contain 1000 measurements from which minimum value, maximum value and median are picked. Sensors are connected into Raspberry Pi 4B 4 GB RAM. The ultrasonic distance sensor which is used in this study is US-015. The sensor’s operating range is between 2 and 400 cm. Connected to the hardware as recommended by the manufacturer. The test code was obtained from an official manufacturer site. The laser sensor used in this paper is Lidar-lite v3 with a declared distance range between 5 and 4000 cm. The test code with defaults parameters and connection setup are downloaded from the official site. Maximum distance update rates can be set to 500 Hz. Tests cases prepared for both sensors consist of stable place in which sensors are placed. In front of the sensors are set walls at different distances such as 50, 150 and 300 cm. In the last test case an glass obstacle has been added at distance 50 cm from sensor. In that test sensors are placed 300 cm from the wall. Preliminary results of these tests show interesting aspects of sensor works.