Tracking the Features of a Spatially Distributed Continuous Field

This is the first of several reports on research that 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 formulas have been demonstrated in many example fields, two of which are presented here. The investigation and test results to date have been confirmed to the purely deterministic case and future reports in this series will address the effect of noise.