There are many good, rugged, weatherproof automotive sonar sensors. But it's hard to find computer-interfaceable drive electronics for them. We've looked, hard.
Yes, there are many circuits for using those ancient, fragile Polaroid sensors from the 1980s. And there are systems that use more modern sensors, like Devantek. But they don't support the ruggedized automotive-grade sensors.
Somebody should design a good board for this. We've seen a bad design, one that doesn't have the variable-gain amplifier needed to get any decent range. So it uses a sensor good out to 10 meters or so and only gets about 1 meter.
Anybody working on this?
John Nagle Team Overbot