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Systems and methods for determining heading

  • US 8,346,466 B2
  • Filed: 11/11/2009
  • Issued: 01/01/2013
  • Est. Priority Date: 11/11/2009
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A system for determining heading that is mountable on a traveling vehicle, the system comprising:

  • an image system that captures multiple distinctive features in an area of interest at a first point in time and at a second point of time during traveling of the traveling vehicle, matches the multiple distinctive features captured at the first point of time and the second point of time, and determines a first unit-vector associated with a given matched distinctive feature based on the first point in time and a second unit-vector associated with the given matched distinctive feature associated with the second point in time for each of the multiple matched distinctive features;

    a global positioning system (GPS) that determines a translation vector based on carrier phase information captured from the first point in time to the second point in time; and

    a coupled processor that minimizes the error in an epipolar equation for each of the multiple matched distinctive features based on the respective first and second unit-vectors and the translation vector to determine a corrected heading, wherein the epipolar equation comprises data characterizing a distinctive feature captured at the first point in time and a distinctive feature captured at the second point in time.

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