Image-based mapping locating system

摘要

A locator system for locating buried utilities such as conduits, cables, pipes or wires incorporates image-capturing and position and orientation measuring devices such as magnetic compass, accelerometers, gyros, GPS, and DGPS. The system may include other sensors such as gas concentration sensors. The system associates images captured during the locate process with buried utility position data and the other sensor data. These data and images may be further associated with terrain images from satellites or aerial photography to provide a highly precision map and database of buried utility locations and visual images of the burial site. Information so obtained may be transferred to a hand-held personal communication device (such as a smart phone) capable of displaying an augmented or virtual reality display showing the location of buried utilities in combination with photo-images and/or terrain maps.

主权项

1. A locating system, comprising:
at least one electromagnetic sensing antenna; a display; a processor; a data storage device operatively connected to the processor; programming at least partially stored in the data storage device for enabling the processor to determine the location of a buried utility based on signals generated by the sensing antenna and to generate buried utility positional data that can be viewed on the display; an image sensor operatively connected to the processor for generating signals representing images captured by the image sensor during a locating process to substantially include an area being mapped; and a second processor remote from the processor, a communications link for transmitting the buried utility positional data to the second processor and programming for enabling the second processor to combine at least one of the images captured by the image sensor with the buried utility positional data to form at least one composite image of the area being mapped, wherein the composite image has a perspective selected from the group consisting of a bird's eye view and an aerial view.