Error compensation for long-distance measurements with a photoelectric autocollimator

Abstract

Although autocollimators enable noncontact measurement, their performance is limited in large-scale and long-distance applications because of errors caused by nonideal point light sources. Therefore, we analyze this type of measurement error, including the error source and the equations used to describe the irradiance distribution of the light spot. A two-dimensional exponential approximation formula is used to express the light irradiance distribution and compensate the spot imaging errors. Experimental results show that the measurement error could be reduced by sixfold. Therefore, the proposed compensation algorithm can be applied to autocollimator measurements over distances. (C) The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License.