US 12,223,673 B1 · Fiber detection and alignment system

Abstract

A system includes an imaging system and a fiber detection and alignment system. The fiber detection and alignment system includes one or more neural networks trained to detect end faces of one or more fibers in an image and to predict rotation angle and direction of rotation for each fiber that will align an axis of the fiber to associated reference keys. In operation, the imaging system generates an image of an end face of one or more polarization-maintaining (PM) fibers to be aligned. The fiber detection and alignment system generates fiber detection information, such as bounding boxes around end faces of each fiber in the image, and fiber alignment information, such as an alignment instruction indicating a rotation angle and direction of rotation that will align fast or slow axes of each fiber to associated reference keys. The novel system provides a scalable technique to automatically align PM fiber.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A method comprising:

detecting an end face of a polarization-maintaining (PM) optical fiber in an image;
and
generating a rotation angle and direction from the image, wherein the rotation angle and direction aligns a fast or slow axis of the PM optical fiber with a reference key, wherein a neural network system generates bounding box coordinates that identify the end face of the PM optical fiber in the image, wherein the neural network system generates the rotation angle and direction that align the fast or slow axis of the PM optical fiber with the reference key, and wherein the neural network system is trained with labeled images having bounding box information that identifies fiber end faces and is also trained with labeled images having rotation angle and direction information that indicates how to align fiber end faces.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Fiber detection and alignment system

Life of this patent

Fiber detection and alignment system

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20