Amorphous Silicon Position Sensitive Detector Array for Fast 3-D Object Profiling

A 32/128 linear array of 1-D amorphous siliconposition sensitive detectors (PSD) was integrated into a self constructedsuitable and portable data acquisition prototype system.The system is comprised by a commercially available existingelectronics module suitable for photodiode data acquisition operationsand by another adapter module, which allows for removaland replacement of the 32/128 PSD based sensor. This system isapplied for imaging 3-D objects using the triangulation principlewith a sheet-of-light laser. The sensor array response obtainedfrom the reflected light of the object was fed into an electronicreadout system and the corresponding signals were analyzed usingthe relevant data algorithm. The obtained results show a sensornonlinearity of about 4%-7%, a wide sensor/system dynamicrange and a 3-D profile spatial resolution supplied by each sensorstrip of 339 μm, which can easily be reduced to 8.5 μm and evenfurther with appropriate software modifications.