BlueRobotics Ping360 Scanning Imaging Sonar

• BlueRobotics Ping360 Scanning Imaging Sonar
• Gives you a top-down view of the ROV’s surroundings
• Has a 60 meter (200 foot) range
• Offers a ROV view of a vertical rope in low-visibility water
• Operates at an acoustic frequency of 750 kHz

The BlueRobotics Ping360 Scanning Imaging Sonar is a mechanical imaging sonar. It’s designed primarily to be used on the BlueROV2 and other ROVs for navigation in low- visibility water conditions, but it’s also suited for applications such as inspection, obstacle avoidance, target location and tracking, autonomous systems development, and more.

The Ping360 is an acoustic transducer that sends a narrow beam of acoustic energy into the water and then listens back for echoes. That transducer is mounted to a motor that rotates it in one degree increments and as it does this it generates a circular image of the sonar’s surroundings with a maximum range of 50 meters (165 feet).

The result is similar to what you might see from a weather radar on the local news or a laser scanner on an autonomous robot.

The Ping360 is designed with an oil-filled section at the top that houses the acoustic transducer and an air-filled section at the bottom. It has an anodized aluminum case and a 1 meter (3.3 foot) cable with a pre-installed cable penetrator. It’s rated to a maximum depth of 300 meters (984 feet).

The bottom has four M3 mounting holes and interfaces with an included bracket that makes it easy to install on the BlueROV2 and in other applications. The Ping360 connects to the open source Ping-Viewer application for control and data display.

Ping-Viewer runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux and can connect to the Ping360 through a direct connection to the computer or through the Companion web interface on the BlueROV2.