SCANNING BEAM COLLIMATION METHOD FOR MEASURING DYNAMIC ANGLE VARIATIONS USING AN ACOUSTOOPTIC DEFLECTOR

A scanning beam collimation (SBC) method is developed for measuring dy namic angle variations in which an acousto-optic deflector is used as a diffractive scanner to compensate the angle variation in real time, and a position sensor is used to detect the position of the beam that is reflected from the reflector (i.e., object) to be measured, The ang le variation can be measured at high speed due to the very high scanni ng speed available in the acousto-optic deflector. There was good agre ement between the angle variation measured using the SBC method and th at using a conventional electronic autocollimator. The repeatability, resolution, and linearity of the scanning beam collimation method were determined using a piezo translator to generate tilt angle; the resul ts show that high accuracy also can be achieved in dynamic angle varia tion measurement. The SBC method was applied to measure the tilt angle variation caused by the beating force of a dragonfly attached to one end of a gauge block. The results confirmed the effectiveness of this new method. (C) 1996 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineer s.