Patent ID: 7209810
Filing Date: 2007-04-24
Classification: B61L

Abstract:
1. A location system for locating the position of a locomotive on a trackway comprising: an inertial sensor system for sensing linear and rotary acceleration associated with the movement of the locomotive over a trackway, said intertial sensor system having a first plurality of MEMS rate-of-turn rotary acceleration sensors having respective first sensitive axes and a second plurality of MEMS rate-of-turn acceleration sensors having respective second sensitive axes, the first and second sensitive axes oppositely aligned; a sensor for determining, either directly or indirectly, distanced traveled over the trackway; a radio-frequency based geo-positional receiver for at least periodically determining a geo-positional value for the locomotive; an optimal estimator for accepting information on a continuous or periodic basis from the inertial sensor system, the distanced traveled sensor, and the geo-positional receiver and establishing a first computational instance and a second computational instance for determining the location of the locomotive as a function of information from the inertial sensor system, the distanced traveled sensor, and the geo-positional receiver.