Construction of Error Field for Distributed Measurement System by Using Laser Tracker

The error field plays an essential role in improving the positioning accuracy of the distributed measurement system (DMS). The key is to identify and compensate the measurement systematic errors of the DMS. In this article, a novel error field construction method for the DMS by using the laser tracker is proposed. A coupled-chain error model (CCEM) is innovatively established by introducing a self-defined chain weight based on the accuracy discrepancy between the DMS and the laser tracker. The CCEM is used to identify the measurement systematic errors of the DMS, thereby constructing the error field for the DMS. By using the proposed method, the problem that the positioning accuracy of the DMS decreases as the increase of the measuring distance is addressed. Simulation and practical experiments are carried out to test the superiority of the proposed method. The experimental results show that compared with two state-of-the-art methods, the positioning accuracy of the DMS within the measuring range of $6\times 6$ m calculated by the proposed method is improved by more than 85% and 60%, respectively.