Ultraino: An Open Phased-Array System for Narrowband Airborne Ultrasound Transmission

Abstract

Modern ultrasonic phased-array controllers are electronic systems capable of delaying the transmitted or received signals of multiple transducers. Configurable transmit-receive array systems, capable of electronic steering and shaping of the beam in near real-time, are available commercially, for example, for medical imaging. However, emerging applications, such as ultrasonic haptics, parametric audio, or ultrasonic levitation, require only a small subset of the capabilities provided by the existing controllers. To meet this need, we present Ultraino, a modular, inexpensive, and open platform that provides hardware, software, and example applications specifically aimed at controlling the transmission of narrowband airborne ultrasound. Our system is composed of software, driver boards, and arrays that enable users to quickly and efficiently perform research in various emerging applications. The software can be used to define array geometries, simulate the acoustic field in real time, and control the connected driver boards. The driver board design is based on an Arduino Mega and can control 64 channels with a square wave of up to 17 Vpp and /5 phase resolution. Multiple boards can be chained together to increase the number of channels. The 40-kHz arrays with flat and spherical geometries are demonstrated for parametric audio generation, acoustic levitation, and haptic feedback.

SonicSpray: A Technique to Reconfigure Permeable Mid-Air Displays

“…Also, the resulting emitter provided near-zero initial speed to the flow (i.e., the mist would float upwards due to buoyancy, but speed was below the minimum threshold measurable by our anemometer), ensuring that our tests only measure particle accelerations induced by our SonicSpray technique, as a result of acoustic pressure. The 16x16 PAT followed the design in [15], using transducers from Manorshi Electronics (MSO-P1040H07T, ø = 10mm) operated at 40kHz frequency, MOSFETs to amplify control signals to 15Vpp (MOSFET, Microchip MIC4127) and a FPGA to control them (Cyclone IV EP4CE6). We connect the array to a PC via UART protocol at 250kbauds (∼250s per updates).…”

A Survey of Mid-Air Ultrasonic Tactile Feedback

“…The software and hardware of commercial systems cannot be easily modified or adapted. Ultraino [33] is an open source, multiplatform phased array control system for airborne ultrasound transmission. It allows users to define array geometries and then visualize the resulting acoustic fields.…”

Enhancing physical objects with actuated levitating particles

“…Existing ultrasound field simulators (e.g., Ultraino [13], which we use) could be extended to incorporate the geometry of the physical object. Thus, when generating the control signals for the ultrasound emitters, the levitation standing waves will be generated taking the reflections into consideration.…”

“…Ultrasound arrays are becoming increasingly accessible, both commercially and through self-build guides with low-cost components [2,12]. Our hardware (described in [14]) was driven using Ultraino [13], an open-source framework for acoustic levitation. We used its implementation of the ITR algorithm (with 5 iterations) to create levitation points, as this is reliable and runs in real-time.…”