Automatic measurement of velocity and length of moving plate using self-mixing laser diode

We propose and demonstrate to automatically measure both a velocity and a length of a moving plate, employing a novel laser speckle velocimeter using a self-mixing laser diode (SM-LD). We derive two empirical equations including velocity of length of a moving plate made of white paper or plastic. After determining a pair of constants fs(0) and /spl beta/ in advance calibration, we can automatically obtain velocity or length from the measured mean speckle signal frequency and/or the number of speckle pulses counted during the measuring time. The investigated range of velocity and length is 100 mm/s to 950 mm/s, and 10 mm to 100 mm, respectively. The measurement accuracy of the velocity and the length is approximately 1% and a few percent, respectively.