Noncontact Probe for Continuous Measurement of Surface Inclination and Position Using Dynamic Irradiation of Light Beam

Summary The paper deals with a development of a new non-contact probe module for the high speed measurement of dimensions of a product. The probe module can continuously and simultaneously detect a position and a surface normal vector with custom signal processing algorithm developed. A probe module using multiple optical fibers was designed and a simulation was performed for verifying the proposed idea. A probe module was also prototyped and tested. A successful results were obtained and its performance coincided with the simulation. For practical application, a multi-beam dynamic irradiation probe using the developed module was designed and prototyped.