Patent ID: 8462319

Claim:
A method for detecting a deformation on a vehicle component, comprising the steps of: displacing an emitter unit together with a detector unit relative to an optically uniformly opaque aperture component disposed on the vehicle component upon deformation of the vehicle component, wherein the emitter unit comprises a plurality of light emitters, each light emitter producing a light beam, and wherein the detector unit comprises a plurality of detectors with the constant mutual spacing therebetween, each detector facing a corresponding emitter, the light emitters having substantially identical intensity and being arranged with a constant mutual spacing therebetween; successively blocking or unblocking adjacent beam paths of light beams between light emitters and the corresponding facing detectors when the aperture component is displaced relative to the emitter unit, thereby stepwise increasing or stepwise decreasing an illumination intensity detected by the detector unit; and transmitting a signal representative of the illumination intensity from the detector unit to an evaluation unit.