Precision roll angle measurement based on digital speckle pattern interferometry

An approach to precise measurement of small roll angle based on digital speckle pattern interferometry (DSPI) is introduced. A simple relationship between the roll angle and interferometric phase distribution is established by analyzing the mechanism of fringe formation in the process of roll detection using a dual-beam DSPI, and reasonable approximate processing. The presented method enjoys some important advantages, such as being free of a cooperative target and a very high measurement resolution. In our experiments, a measurement resolution of 1 µrad, which can compete with the best resolution of the existing methods, is achieved. Theoretically, the measurement resolution can even be improved to tens of nano-radians at the cost of increasing the size of the measuring device. The performance of the method is also demonstrated by a comparison experiment.