General Question

Questionsaboutstuff's avatar

What's the most efficient way of locating someone based off knowing their location relative to someone else?

Asked by Questionsaboutstuff (265points) February 5th, 2014

Imagine you can see 2 people’s locations, person A you can see their distance away from you in kilometres, person B you can only see if he’s closer to you than A or further away

https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/360x351q90/199/jem7.jpg

Moving to different locations can help us located person B, just as sat nav with 3 sources can track down our locations.

Is there a most efficient way of going about solving this problem to find person B in the least number of moved over a large number of random cases?

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

7 Answers

Questionsaboutstuff's avatar

A simplified version of having 3 people and you know the distance of A and B and know C only in terms of closer or further away from A and B, would also be interesting to know if only having 2 people is too difficult.

LuckyGuy's avatar

I am not sure I understand the question. Are you only interested in seeing if B is closer or farther away? Dimming or blocking of the target position would do that.

If you want to know the distance and can move from a known spot to another known spot you can record the viewing angle and use the parallax equations to find the intersection of both lines and thus the location.

Questionsaboutstuff's avatar

Sorry I’m trying to pin point where is B location

LuckyGuy's avatar

If you can move A anywhere along the circle and know the angles, you can find B in two moves. The base of the triangle would be 2 km and the angles to B would be used to determine the distance. If you measured at the extremes when A was furthest to the left and right the distance would be the tangent x 1 km

Questionsaboutstuff's avatar

I don’t know Bs or As angle to me

gary4books's avatar

GPS with a radio link.

gary4books's avatar

Plot them to a map (electronic or paper) and see.

Answer this question

Login

or

Join

to answer.

This question is in the General Section. Responses must be helpful and on-topic.

Your answer will be saved while you login or join.

Have a question? Ask Fluther!

What do you know more about?
or
Knowledge Networking @ Fluther