초록

An unmanned vehicle capable of being automatically guided towards a predetermined destination by the geometrical computation of light signals received by at least three omnidirectional detectors on-board the vehicle. Useful in restricted areas such as automatic warehouses and loading bays.

대표청구항 ▼

A vehicle having means for determining its position and orientation with reference to a final station, in combination with a beacon located at said fixed station; the beacon having a light source for emitting the light in diverging directions over an area in which the vehicle moves, and means for en

A vehicle having means for determining its position and orientation with reference to a final station, in combination with a beacon located at said fixed station; the beacon having a light source for emitting the light in diverging directions over an area in which the vehicle moves, and means for encoding the light with directional information wherein the light emitted from the beacon in one direction is detectably different from that emitted in any other direction; the vehicle having at least three triangulated light-sensitive detectors mounted to intercept light from the beacon at all orientations of the vehicle within said area, decoding means to read the directional information encoded in the light received by each detector and thereby learn the direction in which the light intercepted by each detector was emitted from the beacon, and means to calculate the position and orientation of the vehicle from the directional information so learned.