Patent ID: 9395296
Filing Date: 2016-07-19
CPC Classification: G01N,G01S,G02B

Claim Text:
1. A method for determining the position of a light spot generated by an optical beam when it falls on a scattering surface using a detector array, comprising the steps of: emitting light from a laser source towards a surface to reflect and backscatter the emitted light incident on the surface; focusing said backscattered light incident on a lens to a spot in a focal plane of the lens; disposing a fiber bundle with its input end near the focal plane of the lens; placing a detector array against an output end of the fiber bundle outputting 2D intensity distribution in the focal plane to produce a corresponding set of electrical signals; electronic signal processing the set of electrical signals to provide high-resolution spot location, wherein a position of the focused spot formed by the lens is determined based on finding a centroid of a set of the brightest illuminated pixels of the detector array; a bore-sight aligned camera providing a context image; and displaying the location of the spot on a display of said context image based on said electronic signal processing of said set of electrical signals, wherein a coordinate position of the focused spot is proportional to θ where f is a focal length of the lens.