Lasers and Nearshore Positioning

Abstract

The paper addresses the problems of near shore positioning, in particular those associated with accuracy requirements and the availability of existing instrumentation. A description is given of a prototype instrument — Anglescan, developed by the author which uses a scanning laser beam system interfaced to a micro-computer to position a vessel in near shore conditions. Automatic angular measurements by the scanning laser system to fixed shore stations are used to compute both the XY coordinates of the vessel and its heading. Accuracies of better than 0.1m in X,Y coordinates with an update rate of one per second were obtained in tests. Possible applications are examined together with a discussion on recent developments of the Anglescan system.