Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, Inc.

Lockheed Martin Corporation

Edward D Huber

Rick A Williams

Dean M Shough

Osuk Y Kwon

Rebecca L Welling

Scott E Reinhart

A Bright Field Illumination system for inspecting a range of characteristically different kinds of defects, depressions, and ridges in a selected material surface. The system has an illumination source placed near a first focus of an elliptical reflector. In addition, a camera facing the inspected area is placed near the illumination source and the first focus. The second focus of the elliptical reflector is located at a distance approximately twice the elliptical reflector's distance above the inspected surface. The elliptical reflector directs the light from the source onto the inspected surface. Due to the shape of the elliptical reflector, light that is specularly reflected from the inspected surface is directed into the camera is which located at the position of the reflected second focus of the ellipse. This system creates a brightly lighted background field against which damage sites appear as high contrast dark objects which can be easily detected by a person or an automated inspection system. In addition, the Bright Field Illumination system and method can be used in combination with a vision inspection system providing for multiplexed illumination and data handling of multiple kinds of surface characteristics including abrupt and gradual surface variations and differences between measured characteristics of different kinds and prior instruments.

Bright field illumination system

A laser inspection tool system (100) includes a hand-held remote tool head (108) that provides an image of a target object (116) and a measurement surface (118). The remote tool head (108) includes light sources (208) and mirrors (210) that in conjunction generate two perpendicular lines of light that impinge the target object (116) and the measurement surface (118) and reflect to a form an image in a camera (218) in the remote tool head (108). The remote tool head (108) may be oriented at any angle relative to the measurement surface (118). A processor (102) remotely coupled to the remote tool head (108) captures the image and determines the offset between the light reflected by the target object (116) and the light reflected by the measurement surface (118), and the angle between the reflected lines of light. Using the offset and the angle, the processor (102) determines the height of the top of the target object (116) above the measurement surface (118) and the angle of the remote tool head (108) relative to the measurement surface (118).

Laser inspection tool system

An optical vision inspection system (4) and method for multiplexed illuminating, viewing, analyzing and recording a range of characteristically different kinds of defects, depressions, and ridges in a selected material surface (7) with first and second alternating optical subsystems (20, 21) illuminating and sensing successive frames of the same material surface patch. To detect the different kinds of surface features including abrupt as well as gradual surface variations, correspondingly different kinds of lighting are applied in time-multiplexed fashion to the common surface area patches under observation.

Vision inspection system and method

A method for measuring the contours (30) of a three-dimensional object (4); and a method for calibrating an optical system (2, 8). The object (4) is placed into the field of view of the optical system (2, 8). The optical system (2, 8) is activated to obtain a set of data giving a phase (x.sub.t) at each of a plurality of pixels corresponding to the object (4). The phases (x.sub.t) are unwrapped, e.g., by a method of ordered phase unwrapping. The unwrapped phases are converted into a set of three-dimensional coordinates (x.sub.s, y.sub.s, z.sub.s) of the object (4) for each of the pixels. These coordinates (x.sub.s, y.sub.s, z.sub.s) can be portrayed on a display of a computer (10). The method for calibrating the optical system (2, 8) shares several common steps with the above method. In addition, coordinates of a test calibration fixture (38, 46) are first mechanically measured. Following optical measurement of the calibration fixture (38, 46), an optimization procedure is used to minimize the difference between the mechanically measured coordinates (x.sub.m, y.sub.m, z.sub.m) and the coordinates (x.sub.s, y.sub.s, z.sub.s) calculated from the optical measurements. The optimization procedure in the calibration method fixes the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the optical system (2, 8). A blending method can be used to increase the dynamic range of the measured intensity. Phase shifting is performed by either a method of temporal phase shifting or a method of spatial phase shifting.

Contour measurement system

A measurement device or system (11) for determining features of a three-dimensional object (20) from two-dimensional images includes a projector (27) for projecting a pattern (73) upon the object (20), at least one imager (17, 19) for obtaining multiple sets of image data of the illuminated object (20) and a processor (47) for obtaining a three-dimensional image (81) of the object (20) from the multiple sets of data.

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Edward D Huber