Ultra-precision Positioning By Using Coherence of White Light

In this paper, a new positioning method with incoherence of white light is described and practically implemented to attach VCR heads on a drum very accurately. This method utilizes the Michelson Interferometer which uses white light with short coherence length as the light source to generate interference fringes only in case the optical path difference is shorter than about 2.mu.m. The course position of VCR heads and the fine are determined by appearance and visibility of interference fringes, respectively. The appearance are detected by an image processing technique using FFT(Fast Fourier Transform).