Other

Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.

Kawasaki Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

Takeo Senuma

Yasuaki Tamura

Fumio Nakamura

Yoshiharu Kubo

Munenori Ishikawa

Kunihiko Mano

Hiroshi Nakazawa

Shinichiro Ina

According to a first aspect of the invention, an optical position sensor employs a position encoder having collimators and reflectors with mutually aligned optical axes mounted in a support. A slotted code plate moves between the collimators and reflectors in a plane non-perpendicular to their optic axes. This encoder converts position to optical signals reliably, regardless of mechanical shock or vibration. According to a second aspect of the invention, an optical position sensing system employs wavelength-division multiplexing to distribute light pulses to different position encoders and time-division multiplexing to further distribute pluses to the collimators in each encoder. This permits multiple position encoders to be served by a single light source and optical fiber.

Wavelength-division multiplex digital optical position sensor

Growing community of inventors

Akishima, Japan

Takeo Senuma