Method and apparatus for indoor positioning

A positioning unit mountable on a moving object, the unit comprising:

• at least one light source measuring unit to capture images of a plurality of simultaneously active stationary light sources located at multiple locations;
• wherein each said light source measuring unit comprises:
• an optical arrangement having a matrix of apertures and producing therefrom multiple overlapped images of a scene;
• and
• an imaging sensor to receive light from said stationary light sources through said optical arrangement;
• and
• a processor to determine relative angular information of said moving object at least by disambiguating said overlapped images of said scene.

A method for determining the position of a moving object, the method comprising:

• at least one light source measuring unit on said moving object capturing images of a plurality of simultaneously active stationary light sources located at multiple locations in a space as said moving object moves with respect to said light sources, each said measuring unit having high directional sensitivity along a first axis and low directional sensitivity along a second axis orthogonal to said first axis;
• having an imaging sensor with at least a single one-dimensional line of pixels;
• linearly aligning said imaging sensor along said first axis to receive light from said stationary light sources through an optical arrangement which causes light from said stationary light sources to simultaneously fall on said one-dimensional line of pixels;
• and
• determining relative angular information of said moving object with respect to said light sources at least from the output of said at least one light source measuring unit.