U.S. Philips Corporation

Martinus L Thoone

Henricus P Krukkert

Giok D Khoe

Dieter Kuppers

Pol A Gustin

In a navigation device for land vehicles the orientation signal which indicates the direction of movement along which the vehicle is moving is measured on the one hand by an electronic compass. A further orientation signal is produced by the variation of the vehicle orientation as determined by wheel sensors. These two orientation signals comprise measuring errors. In order to determine an optimum value for the orientation from said values a digital filter unit is used which comprises low-pass and high-pass filters. The value for the orientation signal measured by the compass is presented to the input of the low-pass filter and the further orientation signal is presented to an input of the high-pass filter. The filter unit further comprises a control unit which generates a filter parameter from received orientation signals and supplies said filter parameter to the low-pass filter and the high-pass filter.

Land vehicle navigation device comprising a filter unit for determining

A navigation system for a road vehicle comprises a route-determining unit and position-locating means. The route-determining unit works together with a mass memory which stores geographic data of a road network. The route-determining unit determines a driving route between a starting point and a destination supplied by the driver of the vehicle. The position-locating devices determine the vehicle position coordinates recurrently from the speed and acceleration of the moving vehicle provided by a measuring unit. A correction unit derives a correction vector for correcting the generated vehicle position coordinates. The correction vector is determined by performing a transposition of the generated vehicle position coordinates to an actual road position as repeated by coordinates of the road network stored in the mass memory. An acceleration operator is derived from the measured speed and lateral acceleration and from the generated vehicle position coordinates. The acceleration operator operates on the correction vector in order to derive a correction value for the measured acceleration. A receiver receives position coordinate signal from a navigation satellite. A Kalman filter mixes the vehicle position coordinates with the position coordinates originating from the navigation satellite.

Vehicle navigation system provided with an adaptive inertial navigation

A simple accurate arrangement for determining the instantaneous angular position of a moving object comprises rotation acceleration sensors located in reference axes of the article. Because of the double integration, the low-frequency static angular signal obtained is not reliable so that a device for measuring the static angle is used which supplies these values accurately, it is true, but which is not reliable in high-frequency respects. A correct angular signal is obtained by filter circuits and mixing. A piezoelectric element is used in the rotation acceleration sensor, while the device for measuring the static angle is an electrolytic leveling instrument.

Arrangement for determining the instantaneous angular position of a

Optical scanning device having N linear opto-electronic transducers (157, 159, 161) which are substantially aligned with spaces (183, 185) between adjacent transducers. With each transducer (157, 159, 161) is associated an individual imaging system (163, 165, 167) for imaging a narrow strip (171, 173, 175) of the document on the transducer. Each transducer (157, 159, 161) is displaceable with the aid of adjustment means with respect to the associated imaging system (163, 165, 167). As a result the transducers can be adjusted so that the narrow strips (171, 173, 175) adjoin each other and are aligned. Together they cover a narrow elongate part (169) of the document. In this manner, a comparatively large document can be scanned with a high resolving power by means of comparatively simple and hence inexpensive transducers and imaging systems.

Device for optically scanning a document

The device comprises a transducer (3) comprising a row of photoelectric elements (27), and a coupling member (7) with an entrance (11) which is to be directed towards the document (1) and an exit (13) which is coupled to the transducer. The coupling member is constructed as an integrated optical waveguide circuit comprising a glass substrate (17) in which there are provided grooves (19) which, in order to form optical conductors (21), are filled with a glass having a refractive index which is higher than that of the glass of the substrate. The width of each groove gradually decreases from the entrance of the coupling member towards the exit and over the entire length of the grooves the distance between every two adjacent grooves is substantially constant and substantially smaller than the width of the grooves, so that substantially all light originating from a scanned line of the document is supplied to the transducer.

Growing community of inventors

Eindhoven, Netherlands

Martinus L Thoone