Patent Document ID: 20110246130
Application ID: 12751366
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A method for determining a pose of a probe relative to an object by probing the object with the probe, wherein the pose includes a location of the pose and an orientation of the pose, wherein each probing determines a point of contact between the probe and the object, such that the pose is estimated at each point of contact, comprising the steps of: representing a probability of the pose between the probe and the object by a set of particles, wherein a probability of the location of the pose is represented by a location of each particle, and a probability of the orientation of the pose is represented by a Gaussian distribution over an orientation of each particle conditioned on the location of the particle; relocating each particle to a next location according to a motion of the probe from the point of contact to a next point of contact, wherein the motion is caused by the probing; determining an importance weight of each particle based on the next location of the particle, the probability of orientation of the particle, and a map model of the object, wherein the importance weight is a probability that the particle represents the pose of the probe relative to the object; updating the probability of orientation of each particle in the set of particles using Kalman filtering conditioned on the next location of each particle; repeating the relocating, the determining, and the updating until particles in the set of particles concentrate around a particular pose; and determining the pose of the probe relative to the object based on the particular pose, wherein the steps of the method are performed by a processor.