POSITIONING APPARATUS, POSITIONING SYSTEM INCLUDING THE SAME, AND POSITIONING METHOD

• Main Authors: HARUYAMA SHINICHIRO, KAKEHASHI TAKAO, KASUGA AKIO, MIKAMI HIROSHI, NAGAMOTO NAOKI
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 19.09.2013
• Subjects: ANALOGOUS ARRANGEMENTS USING OTHER WAVES; DETERMINING DISTANCE OR VELOCITY BY USE OF RADIO WAVES; GYROSCOPIC INSTRUMENTS; LOCATING OR PRESENCE-DETECTING BY USE OF THE REFLECTION ORRERADIATION OF RADIO WAVES; MEASURING; MEASURING ANGLES; MEASURING AREAS; MEASURING DISTANCES, LEVELS OR BEARINGS; MEASURING IRREGULARITIES OF SURFACES OR CONTOURS; MEASURING LENGTH, THICKNESS OR SIMILAR LINEARDIMENSIONS; NAVIGATION; PHOTOGRAMMETRY OR VIDEOGRAMMETRY; PHYSICS; RADIO DIRECTION-FINDING; RADIO NAVIGATION; SURVEYING; TESTING

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To specify a two-dimensional position and height (altitude) of a positioning point.SOLUTION: Respective installed light sources Aare flickered by flickering patterns for specifying respective three-dimensional coordinates (world coordinates). Photographing means 21 in a positioning apparatus 2 continuously acquires images including at least six light sources A, analyzes the flickering patterns and finds out the three-dimensional coordinates of respective light sources A. The positioning apparatus 2 finds out image coordinates (two-dimensional coordinates on the images) of respective light sources A. Since the world coordinates and the image coordinates of six light sources Aare respectively found out, a transformation parameter (a parameter for transforming the image coordinates into the world coordinates) by substituting these coordinate values into a transformation formula (namely, a formula for transforming the world coordinates into the image coordinates). Then, the world coordinates of the positioning point are found out from the image coordinates of the positioning point and the transformation parameter.