Synthetic aperture interferometry: High-resolution optical measurement over an exceptionally large field of view

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This proposal is concerned with the development of synthetic aperture interferometry (SAI) for high resolution measurement of large scale, precision engineered parts (e.g. aerospace components and photovoltaic panels). SAI is a new way to link several small interferometers together to make one large interferometer with dramatically increased resolutution and/or field of view. In principle this is similar to the way that arrays of radio telescopes can be linked to provide the equivalent of a much larger telescope. For the case of surface metrology however, it is also important to consider the object illumination as this has an equally important effect on resolution.In this work we propose to build a flexible system using an array of 15x15 5MP cameras and illumination at 3 separate laser wavelengths diverging from up to 225 fibre-optic sources. This is represents around 1TB of data and is at the limits of the processing capability of a high specification desktop computer. In this proposal, however, we will consider a hierachical approach to data analysis that will initially interogate a limited number of cameras and illumination conditions to indicate regions that may be out of tolerance. Subsequently, high resolution analysis will be used to measure the highlighted regions.We will work closely with instrument manufacturers and end users to ensure that the technology is embedded within the UKs expanding high value manufacturing industry.