Patent ID: 8467968

Claim:
An apparatus for placing marks such as paint or another marking material onto the surface of a roadway, the apparatus comprising: a moving vehicle; a GPS-based machine vision locator positioned on the vehicle for automatically sampling discrete geographical location data of an actual pre-existing roadway mark evident on the roadway before the mark is removed; a computer including (a) a sampling program which receives a GPS reference location and uses a coordinate system having the origin defined at the reference location and further, based upon the coordinate system and a sampling interval, samples the geographical location of the pre-existing roadway mark, and (b) a curve fitting program which inputs discrete GPS coordinate data stored in data memory and determines a continuous smooth geographical location function best-fitted to the sampled geographical location data; a marker positioned on the vehicle, having a GPS geographical location, and being responsive to the GPS-based machine vision locator and geographical location function for replicating automatically the pre-existing roadway mark onto the surface of the roadway; and a feedback system comparing the GPS geographical location of the marker and the geographical location function and correcting the position of the marker if the comparison identifies an error.