Patent ID: 7646339

Claim:
Geodesic positioning system for determining the position of a target point, the system comprising: a range pole that can be oriented toward the target point; a tilt sensor arranged on the range pole for generating a tilt angle signal related to the tilt angle of the range pole; a positioning element; positioning means able to capture the position of the positioning element as a function of the tilt angle signal; and triggering means being in signal communication with the tilt sensor and with the positioning means, and adapted so that a trigger signal issued to capture the current position of the positioning element is transmitted to the positioning means as soon as the tilt angle signal corresponds to a tilt angle situated within a given tilt angle range, wherein: the triggering means are adapted so that the trigger signal is associated with weighting information that is a function of the difference between the middle of the given tilt angle range and the tilt angle; and the positioning means are adapted so that: while the trigger signal is applied, a multitude of current positions of the positioning element and the weighting information correlated in time with each of the positions are acquired; and a weighted mean value of the acquired multitude of current positions is formed in such a way that positions measured closer to the middle of the given tilt angle range obtain a larger weight in the mean value than positions measured further away from the middle.