The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 25, 1986
Filed:
Dec. 05, 1983
John L Johnson, Huntsville, AL (US);
The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army, Washington, DC (US);
Abstract
A laser position sensor system for viewing a wide field of view for detecting the angular position of a remote laser. A laser beam directed toward the sensor from any position within a 90 degree circular field-of-view can be detected to a positional accuracy of less than 0.1 degree in a two-axis coordinate system. The system utilizes two parallel sensors having field-of-view optics that compress the field-of-view. The compressed output from each optics is directed through a polarizer and filter to a phase shifter. The phase shifter, a pair of birefringent crystals, encodes the angle of incidence of the laser beam as a phase shift between the two components of the polarized input beam. These components, the e-ray and the o-ray travel different paths through the phase shifter. Subsequently, an analyzer such as a Wollaston prism decomposes the beam into two linear components. These components are condensed through a reimager lens and coupled to a pair of intensity detectors. The detector outputs from each sensor can then be combined to provide a normalized signal proportional to a trigonometric function of the angle of incidence of the laser beam, indicative of its position in space.