Patent ID: 7653487

Claim:
A method for determining the position of an object relative to a moving vehicle comprising the steps of: while the vehicle is moving in a first direction, transmitting successive sensor pulses from a vehicle sensor toward the object, receiving an echo of each sensor pulse, determining a transit time between the transmission of each pulse and the receipt of its echo by the sensor, determining an angle factor as a function of the difference between the transit times of two sensor pulses and the distance traveled by the vehicle between said two sensor pulses, selecting an angle from a predefined table whenever the absolute value of the angle factor exceeds a preset threshold, calculating the angle as a function of said factor whenever the absolute value of the factor is less than the preset threshold, calculating the distance between the sensor and the object as a function of said angle and the transit time for the sensor pulse, generating a signal as a function of said distance calculating step, wherein the angle factor equals the ratio of the difference of the perpendicular distances between the sensor and the object over successive pulses divided by the distance traveled by the vehicle over time between said successive pulses.