🚀 go-pugleaf

I have a job in robotics research this summer, which covers everything from
Action Networks to the hardware.  My biggest headache at the moment is the 
sensors.  We have a laser rangefinder and a ring of infra-red sensors, and
all of them are quite noisy.  Being a theoretical CS person, of course I 
don't have the knowledge to deal with imperfect hardware.  So, any suggestions
and/or references would be appreciated.

The rangefinder projects a horizontal plane of laser light, and finds the 
range to the obstacle with a video camera mounted above the plane and looking
down into it (the laser projects a line on an obstacle, and the farther up 
the picture the line is seen, the more distant the obstacle is).  The IR 
sensors are just an LED and a photodiode.  Both sensors are jittery, and the
IR sensors also drift (as much as 30-50% in the raw data they return) over
a period of minutes.  The laser is too bright up close, and the line spreads
out to cover quite a bit of the picture.

So I can use suggestions or references on how to improve the hardware, or 
how to massage noisy data.  Thanks!

-- 
Chris Phoenix               |  "I've spent the last nine years structuring my
cphoenix@csli.Stanford.EDU  |      life so that this couldn't happen."
...And I only kiss your shadow, I cannot see your hand, you're a stranger 
now unto me, lost in the dangling conversation, and the superficial sighs...