Analysis and Measurement for the Optical Error of the Cat's Eye Retro-Reflector

To enhance the coordinates measuring accuracy of the multi-beam laser tracking 3D coordinates measuring system, measurement for the optical error of the cat's eye retro-reflector is necessary. For this purpose, measurement method for the optical error of the cat's eye retroreflector is proposed. The main sources of the optical error of cat's eye retro-reflector are analysed first, and associated experiment setup and measuring data processing method are described. Experiment results show that the maximum optical error of the measured cat's eye retro-reflector is approximately 4μm.