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AssigneeFuji Xerox Co., Ltd.
InventorsShin Yasuda, Katsunori Kawano, Jiro Minabe, Tatsuya Maruyama, Masaaki Shimizu
Estimating the term…
Laser light output from a laser light source is irradiated onto a transmission-type scale. Due to movement of the transmission-type scale, a polarization angle of transmitted light varies in accordance with variations in orientations of half-wave plates arrayed in a longitudinal direction. It is difficult for the polarization angle to be affected by noise factors such as external light or the like. Light intensity of a polarized light component, which is transmitted through an analyzer and detected at a photo-detector, varies in accordance with the polarization angle. Thus, the light intensity varies as the transmission-type scale moves, and a detection signal is output to a movement amount computing device. When an amount of movement is computed on the basis of the signal, the exact amount of movement can be detected.
An optical encoder comprising:
An optical encoder comprising:
A scale for an encoder used in an optical encoder, wherein a plurality of optically anisotropic regions, which vary a polarization state of incident laser light to respectively different states, are distributed at the scale for an encoder.
A scale for an encoder used in an optical encoder, wherein a plurality of optically anisotropic regions, which respectively rotate a polarization direction of incident laser light, are distributed at the scale for an encoder.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.