A system, apparatus, and method for precisely estimating a three-dimensional (3D) position and a direction. The 3D position and direction estimation apparatus may estimate a distance between at least one receiver and at least one transmitter and a direction of a remote device, based on intensity information of a signal measured at the at least one receiver, may sequentially select the minimum number of intensity information for estimating the 3D position and the direction of the remote device, in a descending order of robustness against noise, based on the estimated distance and direction of the remote device, and may precisely estimate the 3D position and the direction of the remote device based on the selected intensity information.

A system and a method for determining a position and an orientation of an object relative to a defined reference frame is disclosed. A plurality of targets are disposed at known locations relative to the defined reference frame. A head assembly is disposed on the object, where the head assembly includes a plurality of cameras. The head assembly determines the position and the orientation of the object from location data associated with the plurality of targets and image data from the plurality of cameras.

The invention relates to the determination of the rotational position of a sensor by means of a laser beam emitted by a satellite. For this purpose, the sensor includes a rotational position determination device which has a laser beam detection device for detecting the laser beam emitted by the satellite. Moreover, the rotational position determination device includes a control device which is designed for determining the rotational position of the rotational position determination device based on the detected laser beam.

Disclosed is an interactive spatial orientation method and system. The method includes: sequentially scanning, by a scanning apparatus, a receiving apparatus in a first direction and a second direction perpendicular to each other; converting, by the receiving apparatus, received optical signals generated from the first scanning and the second scanning into radio waves carrying results of the first scanning and the second scanning, and transferring the radio waves to a processing apparatus; synthesizing, by the processing apparatus, the results of the first scanning and the second scanning to obtain six degrees of freedom information of the receiving apparatus. The system includes a scanning apparatus; a receiving apparatus; and a processing apparatus.

Systems, methods, mobile computing devices and computer-readable media are described herein relating to light-based positioning. In various embodiments, light sources (106) may be commissioned to selectively energize one or more LEDs to emit light carrying a coded light signal. The coded light signal may convey information about a location of a lighting effect (102) projected by the one or more LEDs onto a surface (104). In various embodiments, mobile computing devices (100) such as smart phones or tablets may detect these coded light signals from the lighting effects and/or from the light sources, extract the location information, and utilize it to determine their locations within an environment.

A system and method use electric potential measurements to locate and characterize passing projectiles, including advanced data processing methods to reject background noise and determine projectile speed, preferentially incorporating acoustic-based measurements to provide additional benefits.

A system and method for determining a position and orientation (e.g., pose) of a rigid body is disclosed. The rigid body may be a position enabled projector, a surveying rod, a power tool, a drill robot, etc., in a given space. The position of the rigid body is specified by a set of three coordinates and the orientation is specified by a set of three angles. As such, based on these six values, the position and orientation of the rigid body can be determined.

Techniques and architecture are disclosed for navigating an area with multi-panel luminaires configured to display fiducial patterns. In an embodiment, a system includes a plurality of luminaires located in an area and configured to display one or more fiducial patterns recognizable by a mobile computing device. The luminaire includes a plurality of panels, each panel associated with one or more solid-state light sources. The luminaire also includes at least one driver configured to control the light sources to transmit light through the plurality of panels at varying light intensities to display a fiducial pattern and configured to detect errors in the display of the fiducial pattern.

Some embodiments of the invention relate to a method for capturing a relative position of at least one first spatial point by means of a portable distance measuring device, the method comprising positioning a known reference object, which has known features which may be captured by optical means, said features being arranged in a pattern designed for a resection, at least one first measuring process, comprising measuring a first distance to the first spatial point, and recording a first reference image linked in time with measuring the first distance, the reference object being imaged in the first reference image, and ascertaining the position and orientation of the distance measuring device relative to the reference object comprising identifying the reference object, recalling stored information about the known features of the identified reference object and identifying positions of known features of the reference object in the first reference image.

Methods and devices for estimating position of a device within a 3D environment are described. Embodiments of the methods include sequentially receiving multiple image segments forming an image representing a field of view (FOV) comprising a portion of the environment. The image includes multiple sparse points that are identifiable based in part on a corresponding subset of image segments of the multiple image segments. The method also includes sequentially identifying one or more sparse points of the multiple sparse points when each subset of image segments corresponding to the one or more sparse points is received and estimating a position of the device in the environment based on the identified the one or more sparse points.