Optical coordination sensor for precision cooperating robots

The need for high precision robotic systems has increased in recent years. Examples include automated assembly of complex electromechanical products such as disk drives, cameras, and medical devices. In this paper we present an optical sensor which can sense motion with better than 0.15 /spl mu/m resolution while also offering the advantages of insusceptibility to ambient lights, high bandwidth, and a large dynamic range. The sensor is used for calibration and coordination tasks in a novel agile robotic system (minifactory) which employs cooperative 2-DOF robots. The sensor can also be used for testing, calibrating, and position sensing in many other high precision robotic applications.