System for interferometric sensing

A navigation system comprising:

• a master navigation component that generates navigation measurement data and establishes a first coordinate system at a first location in a vehicle;
• a slave navigation component that generates navigation measurement data and establishes a second coordinate system in a second location in the vehicle where the distance between the first and second locations is variable due to physical deformation of the vehicle;
• a flexural model component coupled to the master navigation component where the flexural model component provides dynamic information of the displacement between the first and second locations;
• the master navigation component including an error estimator that estimates errors in the navigation measurement data generated by the slave navigation component based on the navigation measurement data generated by the master navigation component and the dynamic distance information provided by the flexural model component;
• the master navigation component correcting the navigation measurement data of the slave navigation component based on the error determined by the error estimator;
• the master navigation component translating the corrected navigation measurement data of the slave navigation component into navigation measurement data in the first coordinate system;
• a first and second sensor each generate sensor data and are located at the first and second locations, respectively;
• the master navigational component combining sensor data from the second sensor based on the corrected navigation measurement data of the slave navigation component with the sensor data from the first sensor based on the navigational measurement data of the master navigation component into a resulting combined sensor data.

A method for combining sensor data comprising the steps of:

• generating master navigation measurement data with a first coordinate system at a first location of a first sensor in a vehicle;
• generating slave navigational measurement data with a second coordinate system in a second location of a second sensor in the vehicle where the displacement between the first and second locations is variable due to physical deformation of the vehicle;
• storing a flexural model representative of the displacement of the second location relative to the first location due to the physical deformation of the vehicle;
• determining dynamic information of the displacement between the first and second locations based on the flexural model;
• estimating errors in the slave navigation measurement data based on the master navigation measurement data and the dynamic displacement information;
• correcting the slave navigation measurement data based on the estimated error;
• translating the corrected slave navigation measurement data into navigation measurement data in the first coordinate system;
• the first arid second sensor each generating sensor data;
• combining sensor data from the second sensor based on the corrected navigation measurement data of the slave navigation component with the sensor data from the first sensor based on the navigation measurement data of the master navigation component into a resulting combined sensor data.

A method for combining sensor data comprising the steps of:

• generating master navigation measurement data with a first coordinate system at a first location in a vehicle;
• generating sensor data from two or more sensors in the vehicle;
• generating one or more sets of slave navigation measurement data with one or more second coordinate systems in one or more second locations of sensors in the vehicle where the displacements between the first and one or more second locations are variable due to physical deformation of the vehicle;
• storing flexural models representative of the displacements of the one or more second locations relative to the first location due to the physical deformation of the vehicle;
• determining dynamic information of the displacements between the first and the one or more second locations based on the flexural models;
• estimating errors in the slave navigation measurement data based on the master navigation measurement data and the dynamic displacement information;
• correcting the slave navigation measurement data based on the estimated errors;
• translating the corrected slave navigation measurement data into navigation measurement data in the first coordinate system;
• combining sensor data from the two or more sensors based on their navigation parameters as determined from corrected navigation measurement data of the one or more slave navigation measurement data.

A method for combining sensor data from multiple vehicles comprising the steps of:

• generating master navigation measurement data with a first coordinate system in a first location in at least one vehicle;
• generating sensor data from one or more sensors in each vehicle;
• storing flexural models representative of the displacements of the one or more sensor locations relative to the first location due to the physical deformation of the vehicle;
• determining dynamic information of the displacements between the first and the one or more second locations based on the flexural models;
• estimating errors in the navigation measurement data for each of the sensor locations based on the master navigation measurement data and the dynamic displacement information;
• communicating between vehicles to establish common reference coordinate system;
• determining sensor locations in the common reference systems;
• communicating sensor and sensor location data to a central processing system;
• combining sensor data from the one or more sensors in the one or more vehicles.