Patent attributes
A laser navigation system for measuring the position of a vehicle or object. An environmental housing with first and second optical windows contains a first laser source with a steering optic oriented to the first optical window; and a second laser source with a scanning optic oriented to the second optical window. A system controller operates the first laser source with at least one of modulation and signal encoding information and provides steering commands to the steering optic to generate at least three or more adjoining or near-adjoining differentiated steered beams, and operates the second laser source and scanning optic to provide a distance measurement information, wherein the position of a vehicle or object is determined from its angular location within the differentiated steered beams in combination with the distance measurement information.