Systems and techniques for deicing sensors

A method comprising:

• determining that a radiation surface of a housing of an acoustic sensor includes one or more layers of frozen precipitation, wherein the housing contains a transducer configured to emit sound waves through the radiation surface of the housing and receive sound waves that are reflected from a target and pass through the radiation surface to the transducer;
• determining one or more resonance frequencies for one or more sound waves that yield a particular shear stress on an interface between the radiation surface and the one or more layers of frozen precipitation on the radiation surface, wherein the particular shear stress exceeds an adhesive shear strength of the one or more layers of frozen precipitation;
• responsive to determining that the radiation surface of the housing of the acoustic sensor includes the one or more layers of frozen precipitation, switching control of the acoustic sensor from a first type of control signal to a second type of control signal, the first type of control signal configured to trigger the transducer of the acoustic sensor to emit object detection sound waves configured to perform object detection operations of the acoustic sensor, the second type of control signal triggering the transducer of the acoustic sensor to generate one or more deicing sound waves having the one or more resonance frequencies;
• and
• removing at least a portion of the one or more layers of frozen precipitation on the radiation surface based on the one or more deicing sound waves having the one or more resonance frequencies.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which, when executed by one or more processing devices, cause the one or more processing devices to:

• determine that a radiation surface of a housing of an acoustic sensor includes one or more layers of frozen precipitation, wherein the housing contains a transducer configured to emit sound waves through the radiation surface of the housing and receive sound waves that are reflected from a target and pass through the radiation surface to the transducer;
• determine one or more resonance frequencies for one or more sound waves that yield a particular shear stress on an interface between the radiation surface and one or more layers of frozen precipitation on the radiation surface, wherein the particular shear stress exceeds an adhesive shear strength of the one or more layers of frozen precipitation;
• and
• based on a determination that there are one or more layers of frozen precipitation on the radiation surface, switch control of the acoustic sensor from a first type of control signal to a second type of control signal, the first type of control signal configured to trigger the transducer of the acoustic sensor to emit object detection sound waves configured to perform object detection operations of the acoustic sensor, the second type of control signal configured to trigger the transducer of the acoustic sensor to emit the one or more deicing sound waves having the one or more resonance frequencies, wherein the one or more deicing sound waves having the one or more resonance frequencies are configured to remove at least a portion of the layer of frozen precipitation on the radiation surface based on the shield stress exceeding the adhesive shear strength.