In our drone, the TF-Luna A03 serves three roles:
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Downward altitude reference. Mounted facing straight down, gives the EKF3 a direct distance-to-floor reading. With
EK3_SRC1_POSZ=2, this replaces the barometer for Z-position in our indoor setup. -
Sweep scanner via SG90 servo. Mounted on a SG90 servo, the TF-Luna sweeps 0-180° at ~120 ms per step, producing a sparse 2D LaserScan (~22 seconds per sweep). Used by slam_toolbox for indoor SLAM.
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RL policy input. The current sweep angle and instantaneous distance feed into the policy observation space. The policy uses this for direct-ahead distance sensing without waiting for a full sweep.
Failure-mode safety
Per the sim-to-real noise sweep, TF-Luna failure is not mission-critical (−1.5 pp coverage). The forward-facing VL53L0X is the load-bearing sensor; TF-Luna provides redundancy and the downward channel.