Automated vehicle guidance using spotmark

A new idea of guiding an unmanned vehicle is proposed. This is a variation of optical system with discrete marks. The vehicle is made to follow discretely set marks, which is optically detected. The marks are retro-reflective "spots" which will be irradiated by a set of light source on the vehicle, and its reflection will be detected by a camera, also on the vehicle. The vision system will process this camera signal to calculate its position. The marks are easy to set, remove or replace, so great flexibility in designing the vehicle's route is provided. In this paper, first the basic geometry of mark detection is explained, and then we refer to the vehicle architecture to describe how it is made to travel along the desired path.