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mathtrilateration

Trilateration with unknown fixed points

I am able to measure my distance to a set of (about 6 or 7) fixed but unknown points from many positions.

The difference in position between measurements is also unknown.

I believe that I should be able to work out the relative position of the fixed points, and therefore where I measured from and the path I took.

I have looked at the wiki page for trilateration, but it only gives examples working from known points.

Solution

  • I have decided to go with a less mathematical approach; force based graph drawing.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force-based_algorithms

    Read points will be a node on the graph, as will the fixed points. I can adjust their positions iteratively until the force function ((expected length - actual length) / expected length) is close to zero on all edges.