Appeal No. 2001-0372
Application 08/928,242
through 16 are now allowable. Therefore, we only have claims 1
through 3, 9 through 13 and 17 through 20 before us for our
consideration.
The invention relates to detecting the location of a target
relative to the position of a tracking device.
Claim 1 is reproduced as follows:
1. A laser tracker for detecting a retroreflective target
on an object, comprising:
a laser which produces an output beam;
a linear polarizer tilted at an angle with respect to the
laser beam which passes a beam having a first linear
polarization;
a quarter wave plate positioned after the polarizer which
passes the beam and coverts the beam to a circular polarization;
a retroreflector affixed to a target;
a scanning optical system for directing the circularly
polarized beam into a field of view wherein the beam will
illuminate said retroreflective target which is present in the
field of view, thereby producing a reflected beam which is
directed back to the quarter wave plate which converts the beam
to a beam having a second linear polarization orthogonal to the
first linear polarization, and then to the linear polarizer which
reflects the beam;
a photodetector positioned to receive the reflected beam
which is also focused onto the detector by the optical system,
and producing a detector signal;
a signal processing system connected to the detector to
obtain information about the target from the detector signal.
2
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