Sub-aperture stitching of aspheric surfaces in precision in-situ measurement

Currently the measurement of complex surfaces is a challenging task in precision engineering. Full aperture measurement is difficult to meet the requirements on accuracy and range at the same time, thus sub-aperture stitching measurement is conducted in turn. A robust six degrees of freedom stitching method is proposed for the in-situ subaperture measurement. The partial-partial-iterative closest point (PPICP) algorithm with a point-to-plane minimization approach is used. To avoid the potential over-influence of outliers, robust M-estimation techniques is applied for the processing of data. The optimal motion parameters are solved iteratively using the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. Curved surface interpolation technology based on the Delaunay triangulation is used to complete the surface integration for achieving seamless surface stitching. The PPICP method can effectively eliminate the systematic measurement errors, such as tilt, translation and rotation errors. Experimental results show that the proposed method has higher accuracy, efficiency and stability for precision in-situ measurements.