An submarine target device comprising an acoustic receiver, an acoustic transmitter and processing means adapted to perform a first cycle of operations comprising detecting within an acoustic stream captured by the acoustic receiver, the start of a first signal corresponding to characteristics of at least one acoustic transmitter remote from at least one detector; triggering the recording of the first signal; detecting, within the acoustic stream, the end of the first signal and triggering the cessation of recording; then a second cycle of operations comprising detecting, within the acoustic stream, the start of a second signal corresponding to said characteristics; and triggering the transmission of the first signal, via the acoustic transmitter.

A method for transmitting data from an ultrasonic sensor to a computer system includes forming a feature vector signal from an electric reception signal; recognizing signal objects in the reception signal and classifying the signal objects according to predetermined signal object classes. The signal objects are forms or sequences of forms. At least one object parameter allocated to the signal object and one symbol for the signal object class are allocated to each signal object, or for each signal object, at least one signal object parameter and a symbol object are determined. The method further includes transmitting the symbol, the at least one signal object parameter, and an error condition of the sensor to the computer system as data of a recognized signal object, wherein the transmission of the error condition is performed with higher priority than the signal object class and the allocated signal object parameter.

A method for transmitting data from an ultrasonic sensor to a computer system includes forming a feature vector signal from an electric reception signal; recognizing signal objects in the reception signal and classifying the signal objects according to predetermined signal object classes. The signal objects are forms or sequences of forms. At least one object parameter allocated to the signal object and one symbol for the signal object class are allocated to each signal object, or for each signal object, at least one signal object parameter and a symbol object are determined. The method further includes transmitting the symbol and the at least one signal object parameter to the computer system as data of a recognized signal object.

A method for transmitting data from an ultrasonic sensor to a computer system includes forming a feature vector signal from an electric reception signal; recognizing signal objects in the reception signal and classifying the signal objects according to predetermined signal object classes. The signal objects are forms or sequences of forms. At least one object parameter allocated to the signal object and one symbol for the signal object class are allocated to each signal object, or for each signal object, at least one signal object parameter and a symbol object are determined. The method further includes determining a chirp value as an allocated signal object parameter. The method further includes transmitting the symbol and the at least one signal object parameter to the computer system as data of a recognized signal object, wherein the at least one signal object parameter includes a signal object parameter indicating the chirp value.

A method for transmitting data from an ultrasonic sensor to a computer system includes forming a feature vector signal from an electric reception signal; recognizing signal objects in the reception signal and classifying the signal objects according to predetermined signal object classes. At least one object parameter allocated to the signal object and one symbol for the signal object class are allocated to each signal object, or for each signal object, at least one signal object parameter and a symbol object are determined. The method further includes transmitting the symbol and the at least one signal object parameter to the computer system as data of a recognized signal object, wherein the transmission of the at least one symbol of the recognized signal object class includes a transmission of a signal object class of a signal object including a predefined temporal sequence of other signal objects.

A transmission circuit according to an embodiment includes: a plurality of constant current circuits, a plurality of switching elements, and controlling circuitry. The plurality of constant current circuits are connected in parallel to a power source line connected to a single power source and a transducer element. Each of the plurality of switching elements is connected to a different one of the plurality of constant current circuits and to the transducer element. The controlling circuitry is configured to control the plurality of switching elements on the basis of a waveform signal indicating a waveform of an ultrasound wave output from the transducer element.

A method for classifying an object to be detected with at least one ultrasonic sensor. The method includes: transmitting a first signal using the ultrasonic sensor to the object; receiving a second signal using the ultrasonic sensor, wherein the second signal is a backscattered signal from the object; processing the second signal into a digital signal; extracting a selected signal portion from the digital signal, the selected signal portion representing a relevant and time-limited time segment from the digital signal; transforming the selected signal portion into a two-dimensional feature vector; feeding the two-dimensional feature vector into a neural network as at least one input variable; determining object class information for the object using the neural network, wherein, based on the at least one input variable, the neural network produces an output variable which indicates a probability value for at least one defined object class for the one object.

The invention relates to a sensor system for distance measuring for a motor vehicle, comprising at least one ultrasonic sensor with a sensor housing and at least one membrane with a membrane diameter that is capable of being electrically stimulated into vibrations and a control unit for controlling the at least one membrane as well as for detecting vibrations of the at least one membrane, wherein the control unit is configured to stimulate in a measuring mode the at least one membrane into vibrations with a measuring frequency and a measuring amplitude. The control unit is configured to stimulate the at least one membrane in a cleaning mode into such vibrations that the sensor housing is set into vibrations with a housing amplitude that amounts to at least 1% of the membrane diameter. Further, the invention relates to a motor vehicle and a method for cleaning an ultrasonic sensor.

Systems, methods, and other embodiments associated with acoustic fingerprint identification of devices are described. In one embodiment, a method includes generating a target acoustic fingerprint from acoustic output of a target device. A similarity metric is generated that quantifies similarity of the target acoustic fingerprint to a reference acoustic fingerprint of a reference device. The similarity metric is compared to a threshold. In response to a first comparison result of the comparing of the similarity metric to the threshold, the target device is indicated to match the reference device. In response to a second comparison result of the comparing of the similarity metric to the threshold, it is indicated that the target device does not match the reference device.

An object detection apparatus mounted to a vehicle includes a transmitter, a receiver, a filter, a threshold calculator, and an object determinator. The transmitter transmits a probe wave in pulse form. The receiver receives a reflected wave of the probe wave. The filter passes, among the received reflected wave, only frequencies that are at least smaller than a pulse frequency of the probe wave. Based on an output of the filter, the threshold calculator calculates an objection determination threshold for determining presence and absence of an object. The object determinator determines the presence and absence of the object by using the objection determination threshold calculated by the threshold calculator.