Thomson Licensing

Hexagon Technology Center Gmbh

Hexagon Metrology Gmbh

Thomson Licensing S.a.

Frank Przygodda

Joachim Knittel

Thomas Jensen

Stephan Knappmann

Herbert Hoelzemann

Oliver Malki

Knut Siercks

Bo Pettersson

Gael Pilard

Claudio Iseli

Marcel Rohner

Johan Stigwall

Wolfgang Hossfeld

Dietmar Braeuer

Yves Salvadé

Jürgen Schneider

Alois Kern

Thomas Schmidt-Uhlig

Stephan Knappman

Yves SalvadÉ

Rudolf Eyberg

A method for measurement of a surface, in particular according to the principle of Optical Coherence Tomography, whereby distances to points of the surface are measured based on interferograms and classifying of measurements as non-valid or valid based on evaluation of phase change or amplitude change of a respective interferogram.

Method for gauging surfaces with classification of measurements as valid or non-valid

A machine state monitoring system for recurrently determining a change in static or dynamic properties of a geometry of a machine with positional encoders to derive a coordinate information of at least a first machine portion with respect to a second machine portion, which are movable with respect to one another. The monitoring system includes one calibration-monitoring-unit with an optical, at least two-dimensional measuring location sensing unit which is fixed to the first machine portion and configured to optically sense an at least two dimensional location information of an artifact which is provided at the second machine portion, and temporarily moved into a sensing range for determining the change in the static or dynamic properties of the geometry of the machine by a comparison of multiple of such sensings, the compensation parameters are then updated and is used to derive the coordinate information from the encoders.

Machine geometry monitoring

Some embodiments of the invention relate to a method for measuring an angle between two spatially separated elements having the steps: preparing a multiplex hologram having a plurality of interference patterns, at least two having different angles of incidence of an object light wave onto a hologram plane; arranging the multiplex hologram in a first element plane on a first element; lighting the multiplex hologram with a reference light wave; arranging a light detector in a second element plane on a second element; detecting a reference light wave refracted on an interference pattern with a light detector; creating an intensity pattern from the detected refracted reference light wave; assigning the angle of incidence stored as machine readable data to the intensity pattern; and/or calculating an angle between the first element plane and the second element plane from the assigned angle of incidence.

Method for measuring an angle between two spatially separated elements

Some embodiments of the invention relate to a coordinate measuring method for detecting an object surface by means of a coordinate measuring machine, comprising a measuring head for accommodating a sensor, a guiding unit for producing a relative movement of the measuring head in relation to the object surface in at least one direction, an optical sensor for detecting the object surface, and a control unit, the object surface being optically detected by the optical sensor during the coordinate measuring method, and a data set representing a surface profile in an object profile domain being generated. The data set is filtered by simulating contact of the surface profile represented by the data set with a virtual tactile sensor, and a tactile data set is derived from the simulated contact such that the tactile data set represents a virtual tactile surface profile in a virtual sensor domain.

Coordinate measuring method and coordinate measuring machine for measuring surfaces, comprising an optical sensor

Method and systems for determining a change of distance to an object by interferometry with emitting measurement laser light from a laser diode are disclosed. The method may include receiving at least a part of the measurement laser light, superimposing the reflected measurement laser light with a reference laser light and thereby providing at an interferometric phase and determining the change of distance to the object depending on the superimposition. In some embodiments, the measurement laser light may be emitted with low coherence and broad spectral bandwidth. An emitting wavelength of the measurement laser light may be fluctuating hop-freely within the spectral bandwidth causing interferometric phase fluctuations.

Interferometric determination of distance change with laser diode, high bandwidth detection and fast signal processing

An apparatus for reading from or writing to a near-field optical recording medium capable of detecting tilt and spherical aberration is described. The apparatus comprises a light source for generating a reading light beam, a near-field lens, an aberration compensation element, and a diffractive optical element. The diffractive optical element is switchable between a far-field mode and a near-field mode and is adapted to generate a main light beam and four or more sub-beams from the reading light beam for determining at least a cover layer thickness error signal. For this purpose it has an outer region with a first grating period and an inner region having a diameter smaller than an effective numerical aperture of the near-field lens, which in the near-field mode has a second grating period and which has a switchable inner area having a diameter smaller than a far-field numerical aperture of the near-field lens, which in the far-field mode has the first grating period. The aberration compensation element is adapted to be adjusted based on the thickness error signal when the diffractive optical element is in the near-field mode.

Apparatus for reading from and/or writing to a near-field optical recording medium

Methods for operating an apparatus for reading from or writing to a Super-RENS optical recording medium, an apparatus for reading from Super-RENS optical recording media using such methods, and a Super-RENS optical recording medium suitable for such methods are described. The super-RENS optical recording medium has location information that is readable without super-RENS effect. The location information is provided as low-frequency information. For locating a position on the super-RENS optical recording medium, a reading light beam with a power below a power necessary for achieving a super-RENS effect is generated and the location information is retrieved from the super-RENS optical recording medium.

Laser power management for super-RENS optical recording media

The optical storage medium comprises a substrate layer and a data layer disposed on the substrate layer, the data layer having a mark/space data structure being arranged in tracks, wherein on a first track, the marks are enlarged in length and the spaces are shortened in length, and on an adjacent track, the marks are shortened in length and the spaces are enlarged in length. The track pitch between adjacent tracks is particularly below a diffraction limit of &#x3bb;/2*NA of a pickup for reading of the data.

Optical storage medium having different dimension of recorded marks and spaces on different tracks

A method and an apparatus for reading from a near-field optical recording medium are described. The apparatus includes:

Method and apparatus for reading from a near-field optical recording medium, and near-field lens for the apparatus

A holographic storage system having an improved data page quality is described. The holographic storage system includes a special optical filter or a special light source for emphasizing the high frequency components of a reference beam and/or an object beam. This is achieved by an optical filter arranged in a Fourier plane, which has a higher attenuation at the center than at the edge. Alternatively, an adapted light source for generating the reference beam and/or the object beam is arranged in a Fourier plane. The light beam emitted by the light source has a higher intensity close to the edge than at the center.

Holographic storage system with improved data page quality

The present invention relates to a holographic storage system, and more specifically to a method for pixel detection in a coaxial holographic storage system. In a holographic storage system according to the invention, with a coaxial arrangement of an object beam and a reference beam the bright pixels within the object beam have a phase shift of essentially &#x3c0; relative to the reference beam. For readout of a data page contained in a reconstructed object beam a detector detects an interference pattern generated by the interference between the reference beam and the reconstructed object beam.

Holographic storage system using destructive interference for pixel detection

A data page for use in a holographic data storage system, and to a method and an apparatus for writing to holographic storage media using such a data page are described. The data page has dark zones for each boundary between phase blocks of a phase mask of the holographic data storage system, which consist of switched-off pixels that are not used for encoding data, and which coincide with the boundaries between the phase blocks.

Data page for use in a holographic data storage system

An apparatus for reading from and/or writing to holographic storage media is described, and more specifically an apparatus for reading from and/or writing to holographic storage media with two or more reference beams that overlap inside the holographic storage medium for reading and/or writing a single hologram. The two or more reference beams are mutually incoherent during reading and/or writing.

Holographic storage system with multiple reference beams

A holographic storage medium is proposed, and more specifically a holographic storage medium with an integrated phase mask layer. The holographic storage medium has a phase mask layer on top of a holographic storage layer, wherein the phase mask layer has one or more phase pattern areas for coupling-in a reference beam and imprinting a phase pattern on the reference beam, and one or more neutral areas for coupling-in an object beam and/or coupling-out a reconstructed object beam.

Holographic storage medium with integrated phase mask

The present invention relates to a phase mask for holographic data storage, and to a method and an apparatus for reading from and/or writing to holographic storage media using such a phase mask. According to the invention, the phase mask has a plurality of phase cells, whose size is equal to an integer multiple of the size of the pixels of a spatial light modulator of the apparatus. The phase cells have a phase variation on sub-cell scale, which is inverse for essentially half the number of phase cells.

Growing community of inventors

Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany

Frank Przygodda