jto@rieska.oulu.fi (Jarkko Oikarinen) (04/27/91)
I have a problem of finding out the location and orientation of an object in 3-D space. Kind of dataglove problem though it's not a dataglove but a medical instrument. Ultrasound seems to be the 'right' way of measuring distance and having 3 transmitters in the object and 3 (or more) receivers somewhere else should be enough to find out the object location (I cannot use radio frequencies to measure the orientation because they're not allowed in the environment). The object doesn't have to be wireless. From what I've found out so far from friends is that a good method to measure distance with ultrasound would be to use pseudo-random noise and then calculate the distance by doing cross correlation with the original signal and the received signal. With correct time value the cross correlation function reaches its maximum and from that the distance can be estimated. Does this make any sense ? Is this a good way for measuring the distance ? If not, what would be better ? Are there ICs for doing that ? Pointers to circuit diagrams in magazines or elsewhere ? What kind of accuracy is possible to achieve with this method ? Thanx in advance. --Jarkko