A new technique for tracking the features of a spatially distributed field for automatic guidance

This paper aims to utilise a model of the surrounding field together with measured data therefrom to locate and orientate an observer. A single valued solution is developed to calculate the position of a vehicle in a continuous field environment described by a known polynomial, from a minimum number of equispaced field measurements taken at that location and known coefficients of the polynomial. Where insufficient measurements from a single scan of the field are available, a formula for utilising extra data from several scans has been produced. The robustness of these algorithm, when the observation process is corrupted by Gaussian white noise, is also addressed