Patent ID: 8279709

Claim:
A method for estimating a position of N sound-emitting transducers, where N≧2, where the method comprises the following steps: a) determining individual distances d ij , or quantities uniquely defining these distances, between any given sound-emitting transducer (T i ) and each of the remaining sound-emitting transducers (T j ); b) based on said individual distances d ij between any given sound-emitting transducer (T i ) and each of the remaining sound-emitting transducers (T j ), i.e. based on a distance matrix M comprising the individual determined distances d ij or based on said other determined quantities, estimating relative co-ordinates (x i ′, y i ′, z i ′) of each of said sound-emitting transducers (T 1 , T 2 , . . . T N ) by a multidimensional scaling (MDS) technique or algorithm; c) executing an error identification and correction when an overall stress value provided by said MDS algorithm exceeds a given maximum value, said executing step including the steps of subdividing said distance matrix M into sub-matrixes, thereby providing stress values for each of these sub-matrixes, and determining that the or those sub-matrixes resulting in stress values outside a given tolerance region comprise at least one pair of transducers, the determined distance between which is erroneous; d) providing the co-ordinates of the pair of said at least one pair of transducers to an error detection algorithm thereby providing an error matrix; e) providing said error matrix and said overall stress value to an optimization algorithm that optimizes said distance matrix; f) based on the optimized distance matrix, estimating the relative co-ordinates (x i ′, y i ′, z i ′) of each of said sound-emitting transducers (T 1 , T 2 , . . . T N ) by the multidimensional scaling (MDS) technique or algorithm thereby obtaining an updated stress value; g) comparing said updated stress value with said given tolerance region of stress values and repeating steps (c) through (f) until said updated stress value is outside said tolerance; and h) when the updated stress value is outside said tolerance region, providing the relative co-ordinates that are based on the optimized distance matrix as the result of the preceding steps.