OPTICAL SHOP APPLICATIONS FOR LASER TRACKER METROLOGY SYSTEMS

A laser tracking system, or a laser tracker, is an interdisciplinary system that combines many engineering disciplines to make an extremely accurate and versatile three dimensional coordinate measuring instrument. These disciplines include optics, precision mechanics, servo systems, numerical computation, and computer control techniques. Although trackers are optical based systems relying on heterodyne laser interferometry to perform measurements, there have not been many optical shop applications that have been developed utilizing this powerful tool. This thesis evaluates the laser tracker as a tool for the optical shop. Included in this thesis is an extensive background chapter that investigates the theory of the laser tracker, error sources, and current applications. An extensive list of references was built that describes the work that is currently being done with laser trackers and what improvements the different groups around the world are doing to improve its performance. This thesis builds upon this work by documenting a series of experiments that were designed to evaluate the tracker’s ability to make optical measurements. The tracker’s ability to measure the radius of curvature of a spherical optical element, the tracker’s ability to align an optical system, and the tracker’s ability to track an image was

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