A method for determining a position and a heading of a work machine having a work implement controllably attached. The method includes the steps of positioning the work machine at a desired work location, determining an initial position and heading of the work machine in site coordinates, determining a position of the work implement relative to the work machine, positioning the work implement at a desired reference point, determining the position of the work implement at the reference point in s...

A vehicle rearview mirror system includes a rearview mirror assembly having an electro-optic reflective element, a support for attaching the reflective element to a portion of the vehicle and a control. The reflective element is movable with respect to the support. The control is for establishing a reflective level of the reflective element and for determining a heading of the vehicle. The control includes a first circuit assembly and a second circuit assembly interconnected by at least one wire...

A method for substantially reducing the error that accumulates in dead reckoning systems. The method includes determining heading changes from a dead reckoning system (10), testing for improbable heading changes (20), and setting to zero any invalid heading change (40). Testing for improbable heading changes (20) in differential odometry systems includes checking the sign of both prior (60) and next pulse count differences (70) and setting an invalid heading change flag (80) if either or both di...

A simple accelerometer economically corrects the output of a yaw rate transducer for (a) vibration-induced noise and (b) aircraft bank angle (e.g., by using the accelerometer to measure apparent gravity forces which are a function of aircraft bank angle) to create a heading source. The exemplary embodiment utilizes a programmed digital signal processor in conjunction with suitable transducers and may be installed in an aircraft for measuring heading changes of banked and turning aircraft in flig...

An outer environment of the vehicle is inputted as an image. Image processing is performed to the input image, and many edge segments are extracted. The edge segments which are colinear are clustered in order to perform a matching operation. Matching is performed in a respective set of plural longer edge segments representing plural clusters in correspondence with a set of plural guide signs as standards of guide of the vehicle mapped on the image input surface, and a set of longer edge segments...

A method for displaying attitude, heading, and navigation data on a single display is described. The method comprises configuring the display with terrain data, overlaying the terrain display with a compass rose display, and superimposing an attitude direction indicator with the compass rose display, the attitude direction indicator referenced to a center of the compass rose.

The present invention features a coke drum de-heading system that provides unique advantages over prior art de-heading systems, namely the de-heading of a coke drum without having to physically remove the head units. This is essentially accomplished using a specially designed dual seated, linear motion goggle blind gate valve, or de-header valve, that is removably coupled to and seals against the flanged portion of a coke drum much the same way a conventional head unit would be attached. The de-...

A method for synthetically calculating redundant attitude and redundant heading for an aircraft using data existing in the aircraft, including angular rates p, q, r around x-, y- and z-coordinates of an aircraft-fixed (body frame) coordinate system, air data information including speed, altitude and angle of attack, includes the steps of calculating attitude and heading based on the body-frame angular rates p, q, r, estimating errors in measured body-frame magnetic field vector components, deriv...

The present invention features a coke drum de-heading system comprising (a) at least one coke drum having an orifice therein; (b) a de-header valve removably coupled to the coke drum designed to de-head the coke drum; and (c) an exchange system, including an upper and lower bonnet and other elements and members adapted to integrate the de-heading system, and particularly the de-header valve, into the manufacturing system. The de-header valve itself comprises (1) a main body having an orifice dim...

A method and an arrangement for synthetically calculating redundant attitude and redundant heading by means of existing data in an aircraft. In one embodiment the heading of the aircraft is available and in another embodiment the heading is calculated from a magnetic heading sensor. When the heading is available (redundant heading) attitude is calculated by weighting together the signals from and angular rate gyros (2) in the aircraft's flight control system, information from air data (altitude,...