Patent ID: 7715999

Claim:
A surface texture measuring instrument, comprising: a scanning probe including a measurement piece that is brought near to or into contact with an object surface and a detection sensor that detects a relative position between the measurement piece and the object surface, the relative position between the measurement piece and the object surface being kept at a preset reference position during a scanning process; a scanning vector commander that commands a scanning vector indicating a subsequent moving position of the scanning probe along the object surface; a drive mechanism including a drive shaft that holds and three-dimensionally moves the scanning probe, the drive mechanism moving the scanning probe in accordance with the scanning vector command; a drive sensor that detects a drive amount of the drive mechanism; a movement-estimating unit that estimates a movement condition of the drive mechanism based on the scanning vector command issued by the scanning vector commander to calculate an estimated operation state quantity; and a correction-calculating unit that corrects a detection value of the drive sensor in accordance with the estimated operation state quantity calculated by the movement-estimating unit, the movement-estimating unit comprising: a nominal-model setting unit in which a nominal model representing signal transfer function of the scanning vector command from when the scanning vector commander issues the scanning vector command until the scanning vector command is reflected on a movement position of the scanning probe is stored, a position-estimating unit that calculates the position of the scanning probe as an estimated position using the scanning vector command from the scanning vector commander and the nominal model stored in the nominal-model setting unit; and a second-order differentiating unit that conducts a second-order differentiation on the estimated position of the scanning probe calculated by the position-estimating unit to calculate acceleration as the estimated operation state quantity, the correction-calculating unit comprising: a correction-amount calculating unit that calculates a correction amount for correcting a measurement error caused on account of deformation of the drive mechanism while the drive mechanism is driven based on the estimated operation state quantity; and a measurement data synthesizing unit that synthesizes detection values of the drive sensor and the detection sensor and the correction amount calculated by the correction-amount calculating unit to acquire a measurement data.