Obstacle avoidance (not collision free) with ultrasonic sensors

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Hello to all,

I am involved a project in which we aim to avoid all the obstacle all around the robot. And we are not interested to a collision free scenario which means just stopping in case of existence an obstacle near the robot but to avoid it.

I have a question concerning on the reliability of ultrasonic sensors for avoiding obstacles (for example working with the navstack for an industrial standard.

As far as I know they are much less reliable compared to the LaserScans. But the problem is that the LaserScans are so expensive. If you want to avoid all the obstacles all around the robot one logic solution is to use a 3D laser scan but as I already mentioned it will lead to a over priced robot.

So I want to ask you to share with me your experiences on using UltraSonic and Radar sensors in order to avoid obstacle (not collision free).

Thanks a lot,