About This Webinar
Accurate, reproducible, and fast positioning is a recurrent requirement in factory automation and instrumentation. In this presentation, Acher discusses two underrated issues:
- What is the referential in which you need precision?
- Can you measure the actual precision in your referential of interest and in your actual working conditions? This is related to the saying “if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.”
In the microscopy context, and for some automation systems based on machine vision, the answer to the first question is straightforward: the camera is the only judge of positioning performance.
To answer the second question, Acher and the team at HORIBA France have developed a system based on machine-readable scales, featuring a continuous field of QR-code-looking patterns, termed nanoGPS OxyO, which is dedicated to measuring the positioning performance of actual vision-based automation systems. Acher highlights [1] that positioning performance is determined not only by stage performance, but also by many factors internal to the instrument or related to the environment (see Fig. 1).
Drifts may be due to the environment or stress on the instrument cables. Vibration may arise from the environment, but it may also be due to the recoil effects of moving the stage and they may have a strong impact on the settling time. The nanoGPS OxyO measurement provides X, Y, and theta measurements for both long periods of time (for drift measurements) and short periods (for vibration and settling times) with excellent precision and accuracy. This simple solution may help identify and solve various positioning issues in the context of microscopy or any vision-based automation system.
*** This presentation premiered during the
2024 Photonics Spectra Positioning Equipment Summit. For more information on Photonics Media conferences and summits, visit
events.photonics.com
About the presenter
Olivier Acher is director of innovation of HORIBA France, a Center of Excellence of the HORIBA group in spectroscopic instrumentation such as Raman microscopes, GDOES profiles, ellipsometers, and others, and a provider of OEM solutions such as gratings for spectroscopy, lasers, position sensing, spectrometry, and more. As an experimental physicist, he enjoys experimenting with both business ideas and photons.
Before joining HORIBA Jobin Yvon in 2009, Acher was the research director at CEA, a French applied research organization. He has published more than 120 academic papers and is the author of more than 35 patents.