System for Accurate Measurement of Vehicle Speeds for Low Speed Industrial Applications
First Claim
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1. A system for instantaneous, real-time speed measurement of a select low speed transport vehicle moving in a linear direction of travel and proximate to a bulk material processing station, comprising:
- a stationary scanning laser and detecting sensor positioned to one side of and generally perpendicular to the direction of travel, said scanning laser and detecting sensor capable of generating a plurality of raw point scan measurement signals over a select arc;
a computing device for receiving the raw point scan measurement signals and applying at least one algorithm to said plurality of raw point scan measurements to modulate said scan measurements signals and provide a first data set representing a flattened two-dimensional linear representation of travel distance of the low speed transport vehicle, saving said first data set in a memory queue, comparing said first data set with a plurality of previously saved datasets in said memory queue using a root mean square deviation algorithm, determining if said first data set exceeds a preselected deviation threshold, accepting said first dataset when said predetermined deviation threshold is not exceeded, calculating the distance traveled by said vehicle from said first data set and computing the speed of the vehicle to produce a unique speed profile representative of the transport vehicle.
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Abstract
A continuous scanning side laser detector system and method for real time, instantaneous accurate speed and direction measurement of a slow moving bulk material transport vehicle through a bulk material processing station.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. A system for instantaneous, real-time speed measurement of a select low speed transport vehicle moving in a linear direction of travel and proximate to a bulk material processing station, comprising:
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a stationary scanning laser and detecting sensor positioned to one side of and generally perpendicular to the direction of travel, said scanning laser and detecting sensor capable of generating a plurality of raw point scan measurement signals over a select arc; a computing device for receiving the raw point scan measurement signals and applying at least one algorithm to said plurality of raw point scan measurements to modulate said scan measurements signals and provide a first data set representing a flattened two-dimensional linear representation of travel distance of the low speed transport vehicle, saving said first data set in a memory queue, comparing said first data set with a plurality of previously saved datasets in said memory queue using a root mean square deviation algorithm, determining if said first data set exceeds a preselected deviation threshold, accepting said first dataset when said predetermined deviation threshold is not exceeded, calculating the distance traveled by said vehicle from said first data set and computing the speed of the vehicle to produce a unique speed profile representative of the transport vehicle. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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10. A system for instantaneously and in real time determining the velocity of a rail car traveling linearly and proximate to a bulk material processing station, comprising:
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a radial scanning laser detector positioned perpendicularly to the line of travel of and for continuously scanning the rail car through a select arc corresponding to the sensor window of the laser detector; and a computing means for receiving detected laser signals from the detector in the window, storing the signals, trigonometrically flattening the signals to produce signal dataset corresponding to a linear representation of distance, filtering noise from the signal dataset, comparing the signal dataset with previously obtained signal datasets, selecting matched datasets with minimum sum errors, determining the direction of movement and calculating the real-time velocity of the target railcar by dividing the calculated distance traveled by the elapsed time between the matched datasets. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14)
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15. A method for precisely determining the speed instantaneously and in real time of a bulk carrier transport vehicle proximate to a bulk material processing station during linear travel, comprising the steps of:
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a) positioning a radial scanning laser and detector perpendicular to the direction of linear travel of the vehicle; b) scanning the vehicle while in a detection window with the laser through a select arc; c) detecting returned signals from the laser and timestamps thereof to obtain a plurality of data points; d) feeding the plurality of data points to a computing device; e) applying a trigonometric algorithm to flatten the plurality of data points into a first dataset corresponding to a two-dimensional representation of speed; f) saving the first dataset into a memory queue in said computing device; g) comparing the first dataset with a previously obtained dataset and applying a root mean square deviation algorithm to determine if said first dataset falls within a maximum deviation threshold to qualify for further processing; h) calculating the X axis translation of a qualifying dataset corresponding to the travel distance of the vehicle; i) computing the time difference between a qualifying dataset and previously qualified datasets; and j) computing the vehicle speed by dividing the X-axis translation by the elapsed time of between the qualified datasets. - View Dependent Claims (16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification