Most autonomous mobile robots view only things in front of then, and as a result, they may collide with objects moving from the side or behind. To overcome this problem, an active omni-directional range sensor system has been built that can obtain an omni-directional depth map through the use of a laser conic plane and a conic mirror. In the navigation of the mobile robot, the proposed sensor system produces a laser conic plane by rotating the laser point source at high speed: this creates a two-dimensional depth map, in real time, once an image is captured. The results obtained from experiment show that the proposed sensor system is very efficient, and can be utilized for navigation of mobile robot in an unknown environment.