An inexpensive pointing and tracking system using TV cameras and an optical fibre beacon

An optical pointing and tracking system incorporating opto-electronic compo nents is described. The technique uses fast hardware based methods for trac king a beacon of laser light, where the focused spot is maintained in the c entre of thr TV camera image. The equipment was originally designed for use with a laser line-of-sight communication system for the control of a mobil e vehicle, but can be easily used in many other tracking applications such as navigation, target acquisition and optical measurement systems. The syst em is designed to operate at short ranges from 1-20 m and has a positional accuracy of 0.1 mm of better at 10 m operating distance. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.