2D position guidance with single-station optical scan-based system

The workshop Measuring Position System (wMPS) based on intersection of optical planes is widely applied in large-scale metrology. However, in guidance areas concerning more about horizontal directions such as in the area of transporting with AGVs, the coordinate of z axis which represents the height of the vehicle is of no particular importance. Also, the installation and parameters calibration of wMPS is complex and time-consuming. In this paper, a new method with single transmitter measuring two dimensional coordinate to guide the moving object (except the vertical direction) is proposed and demonstrated. The three dimensional coordinate of receiver was calculated if its horizontal angle, vertical angle and the coordinate of vertical direction are given. In order to get the receiver’s horizontal and vertical angle, a serious of mathematical formulas was derived from a model of single transmitter with two rotating laser planes. The coordinate of vertical direction was obtained by the laser tracker and mapped from laser tracker coordinates to transmitter coordinates. Concerning that the coordinate of the vertical direction remains almost the same if the object moves in the level ground, a series of vertical-direction coordinates of moving object was measured beforehand and the average value of coordinates was the approximate vertical-direction coordinates of every point. To verify this method, the points acquired by the transmitter were remeasured by the laser tracker. Finally, the coordinates were compared and the results were analyzed. The experiment results show that the method’s measuring accuracy has reached 5mm.