Patent ID: 6999021

Claim:
A method for locating underground utilities within an area of interest which includes: traversing back and forth across said area of interest with a plurality of underground utility sensors to cover the area of interest, continuously obtaining sensor data from each of said plurality of underground utility sensors while traversing said area of interest, said sensor data being indicative of presence of an underground utility, said step of continuously obtaining sensor data being electronically performed without requiring interpretive action by an operator as to the position of the underground utility during said traversing of said area of interest, substantially automatically storing said sensor data in a data storage device, substantially simultaneously obtaining continuous area location data from a position locating system while traversing said area of interest to obtain area location data indicative of the location of the area of interest traversed while obtaining said sensor data, directly providing said stored sensor data and said location data to a processor, and electronically processing by spatial beamforming said sensor data stored in said data storage device using said processor and to determine anomalies in said sensor data, and further processing said sensor data with the anomalies together with said area location data using said processor to map the location of one or more underground utilities within said area of interest based on spatial variability of said sensor data.