Measurement of the Position and Heading of a Vehicle Using Corner Cubes on a Road Side

Abstract

This paper proposes a method for measuring the position and heading of a vehicle moving on a curved course. The method uses laser fan beam transmitters and photo detectors mounted on the vehicle and an array of corner cubes on the course side as retro-reflecting targets. The laser beams have different direction angles and offset distances with each other and, therefore, return to the vehicle at different time according to the position and heading of the vehicle. The on-board computer calculates the position and heading from the time data that indicate the instants of detecting the reflections from the target corner cubes. The measured data are used for correcting the dead reckoning system.