Optical sensor for measuring the distance and/or inclination of a surface
AssigneeCarl Zeiss Jena GmbH
InventorStefan Schmidt
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An optical sensor for measuring the distance and/or inclination of a surface, particularly relative to a reference plane, or for detecting the distance and/or change in inclination of a surface, wherein a light spot is generated on a detector in that a light beam that is collimated in a first direction is focused in a direction perpendicular to the first direction, so that a line focus is effected along the first direction on the surface and the line focus is imaged on the detector in the second direction and, at the same time, the beam that is reflected at the surface and collimated in the first direction is focused on the detector, wherein the line focus is perpendicular to the reflection plane defined by the impinging, reflected beam.
Claims9
An optical sensor for measuring the distance and/or inclination of a surface relative to a reference plane, or for detecting the distance and/or change in inclination of a surface, comprising:
- a detector;
- a light source operable to generate a light beam;
- a collimator that collimates the light beam in a first direction;
- a focusing element that focuses the collimated light in a second direction perpendicular to the first direction, so that a line focus is effected along the first direction on the surface and the line focus is imaged on the detector in the second direction;
- and
- the focusing element also focusing, at the same time, the light beam reflected at the surface and collimated in the first direction so as to be focused on the detector;
- said line focus lying in the reference plane.
An optical sensor for measuring the distance and inclination of a substrate comprising:
- a light source for generating a light beam;
- optics for focusing the light beam in a meridional beam path and for generating a line focus in the substrate wherein the line focus is subsequently imaged on a position detector in the meridional beam path, said imaged line focus being used to determine a vertical distance of the substrate from a reference plane;
- and
- anamorphotic optics for focusing, at the same time, the light beam in a sagittal beam path so as to be collimated and focused on the detector to determine angular variations in the substrate.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.