Calibration of Large-Scale Spatial Positioning Systems Based on Photoelectric Scanning Angle Measurements and Spatial Resection in Conjunction with an External Receiver Array

Positioning systems providing high-precision real-time measurements over very large spatial scales are urgently required for large-scale industrial manufacturing applications. While large-scale positioning systems (LSPSs) employing laser transmitter stations have been employed in engineering practice, the introduction of an LSPS into an existing industrial manufacturing setting must first solve the problems of docking with existing control points and external parameter calibration. However, calibrating the external parameters of a measurement system is very difficult under extreme and complicated working conditions due to the limited visibility of transmitter stations and the measurement distances involved. This problem is addressed in this paper by proposing a single transmitter station calibration method based on a photoelectric scanning multi-angle resection positioning model that combines photoelectric scanning angle measurements and spatial resection in conjunction with an external receiver array. Positioning information is obtained by solving the unknown parameters of the model according to a nonlinear optimization approach using the Levenberg–Marquardt least-squares fitting algorithm. The feasibility and spatial positioning accuracy of the proposed method are verified experimentally. The experimental results demonstrate that the principles of the proposed method are correct, and the method can achieve millimeter measurement accuracy, which meets the requirements of measurement tasks in engineering applications.