Determining orientation

1. A ceiling mountable luminaire for illuminating an environment, and for use in determining an orientation of a camera based on an image of the ceiling mountable luminaire captured by the camera, the ceiling mountable luminaire comprising:

a light source having an on state in which it emits light and an off state in which it does not emit light, the light source being of a shape having a symmetry;

a controller configured to control the light source with different modulations in different regions of said light source to emit said light in the on state with a lighting effect having an asymmetric lighting distribution, wherein said lighting effect is imperceptible to human vision and perceptible to the camera, the light source being arranged to emit said light with said symmetry that is visible to a human, whilst the asymmetric lighting distribution is detected by the camera.

2. The ceiling mountable luminaire of claim 1 , wherein the ceiling mountable luminaire is for mounting on a surface defining a plane, the symmetry being in the plane of said surface.

3. The ceiling mountable luminaire of claim 2 , wherein the lighting effect has no symmetry in the plane of said surface.

4. The ceiling mountable luminaire of claim 1 , wherein the controller is configured to produce said lighting effect using coded light.

5. The ceiling mountable luminaire of claim 1 , wherein the light source is divided into asymmetric sections, and the controller is configured to produce said lighting effect by emitting the light differently from the different sections.

6. The ceiling mountable luminaire of claim 5 , wherein the controller is configured to produce said lighting effect by emitting differently coded light from each of said sections, or emitting coded light from one of the sections while emitting non coded light from another of the sections.

7. A device comprising:

an input for receiving image data from a camera, the image data comprising an image of a light source which emits light and is of a shape having a symmetry;

at least one hardware processor configured to perform an image analysis and determine an orientation of the camera relative to the light source by performing a geometric perspective calculation based on the image of the light source;

wherein the at least one hardware processor is configured to resolve ambiguity in the orientation by detecting a lighting effect having an asymmetric lighting distribution in the light emitted by the light source, and

wherein said lighting effect is imperceptible to human vision and perceptible to the camera, the light source being arranged to emit said light with said symmetry that is visible to a human, whilst the asymmetric lighting distribution is detected by the camera.

8. The device of claim 7 , wherein said lighting effect comprises coded light to form the asymmetric lighting distribution, and the at least one hardware processor is configured to detect said coded light and said effect and thereby resolve the ambiguity based on the detected coded light.

9. The device of claim 7 , wherein the at least one hardware processor is further configured to detect a distance of the camera relative to the light source as part of the geometric perspective calculation, the distance and the orientation together giving a position of the camera relative to the light source.

10. The device of claim 9 , wherein the at least one hardware processor is configured to obtain a geographic location of the light source, and to determine a geographic location of the camera based on the geographic location of the light source combined with the position of the camera relative to the light source.

11. The device of claim 7 , wherein the image data further comprises images of one or more other objects, and the at least one hardware processor is configured to also include the images of the one or more other objects in the geometric perspective calculation.

12. The device of claim 7 , wherein the device comprises the camera.

13. A device comprising:

an input for receiving image data from a camera, the image data comprising an image of a light source which emits light and is of a shape having a symmetry;

at least one hardware processor configured to perform an image analysis and determine an orientation of the camera relative to the light source by performing a geometric perspective calculation based on the image of the light source;

wherein the at least one hardware processor is configured to resolve ambiguity in the orientation by detecting a lighting effect having an asymmetric lighting distribution in the light emitted by the light source, and

wherein the image data comprises an image of a single light source, the at least one hardware processor being configured to determine the distance of the camera from said light source by performing the geometric perspective calculation to compare one or more retrieved physical dimensions of the single light source with one or more apparent dimensions of the image of the single light source.

14. A computer program product embodied on a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing a computer program this is configured to cause a processor executing the program to perform operations of:

receiving image data from a camera, the image data comprising an image of a light source which emits light and is of a shape having a symmetry;

determining an orientation of the camera relative to the light source by performing a geometric perspective calculation based on the image of the light source; and

resolving an ambiguity in the orientation by detecting a lighting effect having an asymmetric lighting distribution in the light emitted by the light source, and

wherein said lighting effect is imperceptible to human vision and perceptible to the camera, the light source being arranged to emit said light with said symmetry that is visible to a human, whilst the asymmetric lighting distribution is detected by the camera.