Trilateration with unknown fixed points

Question

I am able to measure my distance to a set of (about 6 or 7) fixed but unknown points from many positions.

The difference in position between measurements is also unknown.

I believe that I should be able to work out the relative position of the fixed points, and therefore where I measured from and the path I took.

I have looked at the wiki page for trilateration, but it only gives examples working from known points.

A fun problem, but you might have more luck trying http://math.stackexchange.com/. Also, not sure this will matter, but what dimension space are you working in? — Seth, Dec 12 '10 at 07:06

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 12 '10 at 17:08

I have decided to go with a less mathematical approach; force based graph drawing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force-based_algorithms

Read points will be a node on the graph, as will the fixed points. I can adjust their positions iteratively until the force function ((expected length - actual length) / expected length) is close to zero on all edges.

Trilateration with unknown fixed points

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