Measurement of the 3D Position and Attitude of a Vehicle by Use of Corner Cubes and Laser Fan Beams

Abstract

This paper proposes a method to measure the 3D position and attitude of a vehicle by use of corner cubes and laser fan beams. The method uses three sets of laser transceivers mounted on the vehicle and retro-reflecting targets (cornercubes) set along a side of the course. Each laser transceiver consists of a laser beam transmitter that emits a fan shaped laser and photo sensor for detecting the laser reflected by the retro-reflecting targets. The three laser beams are set with different angles and offset distances from each other, so that the time data of detecting the returned laser depend on the position and attitude of the vehicle. Then the on-board computer calculates the position and attitude from the time data. This paper reports the measurement principle, simulation and experimental results.