I am trying to implement the Trilateration process in 2D. The wikipedia article relating to this: Tilateration
I have found a nice question here at this site, where the algorithm is well explained:artifical intelligence
After all, I tried to implement the algorithm in c++. Unfortunately I faced some problems... Let's see my implementation. It is only a function: The first inputs are three vector, each representing a 2D point with X,Y coordinates. The other (r1,r2,r3) input variables stand for the distance/radius of each point.
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <sstream>
#include <math.h>
#include <vector>
using namespace std;
std::vector<double> trilateration(double point1[], double point2[], double point3[], double r1, double r2, double r3) {
std::vector<double> resultPose;
//unit vector in a direction from point1 to point 2
double p2p1Distance = pow(pow(point2[0]-point1[0],2) + pow(point2[1]-point1[1],2),0.5);
double exx = (point2[0]-point1[0])/p2p1Distance;
double exy = (point2[1]-point1[1])/p2p1Distance;
//signed magnitude of the x component
double ix = exx*(point3[0]-point1[0]);
double iy = exy*(point3[1]-point1[1]);
//the unit vector in the y direction.
double eyx = (point3[0]-point1[0]-ix*exx)/pow(pow(point3[0]-point1[0]-ix*exx,2) + pow(point3[1]-point1[1]-iy*exy,2),0.5);
double eyy = (point3[1]-point1[1]-iy*exy)/pow(pow(point3[0]-point1[0]-ix*exx,2) + pow(point3[1]-point1[1]-iy*exy,2),0.5);
//the signed magnitude of the y component
double jx = eyx*(point3[0]-point1[0]);
double jy = eyy*(point3[1]-point1[1]);
//coordinates
double x = (pow(r1,2) - pow(r2,2) + pow(p2p1Distance,2))/ (2 * p2p1Distance);
double y = (pow(r1,2) - pow(r3,2) + pow(iy,2) + pow(jy,2))/2*jy - ix*x/jx;
//result coordinates
double finalX = point1[0]+ x*exx + y*eyx;
double finalY = point1[1]+ x*exy + y*eyy;
resultPose.push_back(finalX);
resultPose.push_back(finalY);
return resultPose;
}
As I mentioned I followed this article. I am of the opinion that the problem lies at the part where the y coordinate is calculated. I am also not sure about last part, where I calculate finalX, finalY...
My main function is the following:
int main(int argc, char* argv[]){
std::vector<double> finalPose;
double p1[] = {4.0,4.0};
double p2[] = {9.0,7.0};
double p3[] = {9.0,1.0};
double r1,r2,r3;
r1 = 4;
r2 = 3;
r3 = 3.25;
finalPose = trilateration(p1,p2,p3,r1,r2,r3);
cout<<"X::: "<<finalPose[0]<<endl;
cout<<"Y::: "<<finalPose[1]<<endl;
//x = 8, y = 4.1
}
The result should be around X~8 and Y~4.1, but I got X = 13.5542 and Y=-5.09038
So my problem is and question is: I have problem with dividing the calculations for x and y. I think I could solve the algorithm till x, after that I have problems with calculating y.
The calculation is the following for y: y = (r12 - r32 + i2 + j2) / 2j - ix / j
I do not know which i and j I should use here since I have two i (ix,iy) and two j(jx,jy). As you can see I used iy and jy but at the end of the line I used ix due to multiplication with x. Thanks in advance!
It's a little unclear, and perhaps incorrect, in the linked SO answer that the values of i
and j
are scalar values and computed a bit differently than the other vector quantities. More explicitly you should have:
i = ex · (P3 - P1) = exx (P3x - P1x) + exy (P3y - P1y) = ix + iy
j = ey · (P3 - P1) = eyx (P3x - P1x) + eyy (P3y - P1y) = jx + jy
Note that ·
is the dot product of two vectors here. Thus, in your code there should be no ix
, iy
, jx
or jy
.
Also, in your calculation of y
you should change the denominator of /2*j
to:
/ (2*j)
otherwise you are multiplying by j
instead of dividing. Making these changes gives me the result of [7.05, 5.74]
which is closer to your expected values.