Three-dimensional triangulation and time-of-flight based tracking systems and methods
US9377533B2 · kind B2 · utility
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Aug 11, 2015 |
| Grant date | Jun 28, 2016 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Aug 11, 2035 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG01S17/48
- WIPO fieldMeasurement
- WIPO sectorInstruments
Abstract
A three-dimension position tracking system is presented. The system includes transmitters and receivers. A transmitter scans continuous or pulsed coherent light beams across a target. The receiver detects the reflected beams. The system recursively determines the location of the target, as a function of time, via triangulation and observation of the time-of-flight of the incoming and outgoing beams. The transmitter includes ultra-fast scanning optics to scan the receiver's field-of-view. The receiver includes arrays of ultra-fast photosensitive pixels. The system determines the angles of the incoming beams based on the line-of-sight of the triggered pixels. By observing the incoming angles and correlating timestamps associated with the outgoing and incoming beams, the system accurately, and in near real-time, determines the location of the target. By combining the geometry of the scattered beams, as well as the beams' time-of-flight, ambiguities inherent to triangulation and ambiguities inherent to time-of-flight location methods are resolved.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.