Development of a high-precision optical angle sensor

Abstract

Optical angle sensors based on the laser autocollimation method can improve the sensitivity of angle detection by applying a photodiode as the detector. On the other hand, the resolution is affected by the angle detection sensitivity and noise components in the sensor output. In this paper, aiming to improve the measurement resolution of an optical angle sensor based on the laser autocollimation, an attempt is made to reduce the noise components in the readout signals from the photodiode in the angle sensor by directly mounting the detector on a signal processing circuit. Experiments are carried out to verify the feasibility of the developed optical setup.