Preliminary Evaluation of an VL53L8CX 8X8 Time-of-flight Zone Distance Sensor Module for a Line-Following Robot Application

Abstract

This paper describes preliminarily evaluation of an 8x8 Time-of-Flight obstacle detection module for a line-following mobile robot. The module is based on the VL53L8CX multi-zone distance sensor mounted on a Teensy 4.1 robot platform. The method uses a low-resolution depth matrix, simple validity filtering, and rule-based interpretation of obstacle patterns. Static measurements were taken for three obstacle types relevant to line-following competitions: a brick, a curtain, and a tunnel. The results show that the sensor can detect obstacles in the practical 10-30 cm range and that a distance of approximately 25 cm is especially useful for distinguishing obstacle patterns. A brick appears as a compact surface with background visible around it, a curtain appears as a wide non-homogeneous surface, and a tunnel shows a hollow center. The conclusion is that an 8x8 ToF matrix is not a perfect universal classifier, but it gives enough spatial information to replace simpler single-distance detection in many practical line-following scenarios.