Reflective cable locating system
AssigneeAdvanced Geosciences, Inc.
InventorMarkus Lagmanson
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A reflective cable system for a geophysical survey system includes a reflective cable that includes a conductive wire surrounded by an electrically insulating sheath and an exterior surface. The reflective cable includes reflective material that is on or visible through the exterior surface and that is configured to reflect a complete spectrum of light provided by a light source back to the light source. The reflective cable system also includes a connector electrically coupled to at least one end of the reflective cable and configured to couple to a geophysical survey system. The reflective cable may be used to locate the reflective cable in a physical environment and used to determine a position of the reflective cable using lidar or photogrammetry for generating geophysical survey models.
Claims20
A method of locating a reflective object comprising:
- receiving a first image of a physical environment that includes a reflective object, wherein the first image was captured by an imaging sensor at a first position and a first orientation when a first quantity of light from a light generator illuminates the physical environment during the capture of the first image by the imaging sensor;
- receiving a second image of the physical environment that includes the reflective object that was captured by the imaging sensor at the first position and the first orientation when a second quantity of light from the light generator that is less than the first quantity of light illuminates the physical environment during the capture of the second image by the imaging sensor;
- and
- comparing the second image to the first image to generate a compared image, wherein the compared image illustrates a difference in illuminance of the reflective object that distinguishes the reflective object from other objects in the physical environment.
A method of determining position of a reflective cable, comprising:
- imaging, by a cable locator device, a physical environment that includes a reflective cable, wherein the cable locator device includes an imaging sensor that detects light, and wherein one or more distances from the cable locator device to the reflective cable are calculated from the imaging;
- and
- determining one or more positions of the reflective cable based on the one or more distances and a position of the cable locator device.
A reflective object locator device, comprising:
- an imaging sensor;
- a non-transitory memory;
- and
- one or more hardware processors coupled to the non-transitory memory and the imaging sensor and configured to read instructions from the non-transitory memory to cause the system to perform operations comprising:
- receiving a first image of a physical environment that includes a reflective object, wherein the first image was captured by the imaging sensor at a first position and a first orientation when a first quantity of light from a light generator illuminates the physical environment during the capture of the first image by the imaging sensor;
- receiving a second image of the physical environment that includes the reflective object that was captured by the imaging sensor at the first position and the first orientation when a second quantity of light from the light generator that is less than the first quantity of light illuminates the physical environment during the capture of the second image by the imaging sensor;
- and
- comparing the second image to the first image to generate a compared image, wherein the compared image illustrates a difference in illuminance of the reflective object that distinguishes the reflective object from other objects in the physical environment.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.