Precision roll angle measurement system based on autocollimation

Abstract

The traditional autocollimation method is widely used for small angle measurement due to its high precision and high resolution, but it cannot be used to measure the roll angle. To overcome this problem, a roll angle measurement method based on autocollimation is proposed in this paper. To achieve roll angle measurement, a transmission grating is selected to generate a pair of measurement beams, and a combined target is designed as the angle sensor. A roll angle with higher accuracy and resolution can be obtained by differential measurement, because the measurement error introduced by the beam angle drift of the light source can be effectively suppressed. A series of experiments is carried out to verify the performance of the proposed system. In the experiments, the resolution of the roll angle is better than 0.05  arcsec, and the accuracy of the system is 0.20  arcsec with a measurement range of 250  arcsec.