JP2518066B2 - Laser beam direction control device - Google Patents

Description

Description: TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a laser beam direction control device, and in particular, position determination of a flying object or communication with a flying object using a laser beam as a medium between a ground device and a flying object. The present invention relates to a laser beam direction control device that controls the direction of a laser beam sent from a ground device so as to follow a flying object.

[Conventional technology]

Conventionally, a laser beam direction control device of this type is an entire ground device including a high-field camera device for transmitting and receiving a laser beam, a laser device for generating a laser beam for transmission, and a flying device tracking device. However, it is mounted on a gimbal mechanism capable of spatial position control, and in the initial state, it searches the tracking target space with a certain scanning pattern, and the reflected light from the opponent's flying object or the laser response emitted from the flying object. Capture light. After the capture, the laser beam is emitted while controlling the direction so as to track the reflected light or the response light from the flying object.

In order to control the direction of the laser beam in this way, the positional deviation signal between the irradiation beam and the reception beam obtained through the position detector of the laser reflection or the light source is converted into the directivity angle of the laser beam, and it is interposed in the light transmission path. The internal reflecting mirror sharing the light transmission path is drive-controlled to control the laser beam direction so as to face the projectile. In the above-mentioned internal reflecting mirror, normally, two reflecting mirrors arranged in the optical path are used to change the optical path in the X direction and the Y direction, respectively, and the above-mentioned directivity angle is given.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention]

When the relative velocity with the flying object is high or the distance is long, it is necessary to control the direction of the laser beam with high accuracy in order to track the flying object with high accuracy.

Since the conventional laser beam direction control device described above uses the tracking signal obtained from the flying object as the direction control signal of the laser beam, the fluctuation of the output beam direction of the laser device and the angle fluctuation of the internal reflecting mirror that controls the laser beam direction are performed. However, there is a problem in that the direction of the laser beam cannot be accurately controlled in the direction of the detected laser light source.

An object of the present invention is to eliminate the above-mentioned problems and to provide a laser beam direction control device capable of correcting the fluctuation of the output beam direction of the laser device and the angular fluctuation of the internal reflecting mirror.

[Means for solving the problem]

According to the present invention, in the laser beam direction control device for directing the transmitted laser beam to the projectile while receiving the reflected light or the response light by the transmitted laser beam transmitted to the projectile, the transmission / reception system and the tracking system are provided. A first mounting method, in which a space to be tracked by the flying object is scanned by the light transmitting / receiving system in a predetermined scanning pattern, and after capturing the flying object, the light transmitting / receiving system and the tracking system are caused to track the captured flying object.
Of the tracking means and the directing direction of the sending laser beam so as to correct the positional displacement of the flying object between the sending of the sending laser beam by the sending and receiving system and the reception of reflected light or response light. Second tracking means for performing tracking correction of the flying object while automatically correcting the optical axis fluctuation in the transmission / reception system, and the optical axis of the transmission laser beam in the second tracking means. It is possible to obtain a laser beam direction control device including a laser beam optical axis maintaining means for automatically correcting the fluctuation while detecting the fluctuation.

The second tracking means matches the transmission magnification and the reception magnification, and transmits and receives the laser beam with a transmission telescope and a reception telescope arranged in parallel adjacent to each other.
One double-sided reflecting mirror common to the light-transmitting and receiving systems is arranged in a spatial position controllable state, and the displacement of the flying object is acquired by a four-quadrant photodetector, and this displacement is determined by the angle of the double-sided reflecting mirror. There is obtained a laser beam direction control device characterized in that it is configured to automatically correct including fluctuations.

Further, the laser beam optical axis maintaining means is provided with a deflection angle variable prism capable of changing the emission angle in the laser beam transmission path, and extracts a part of the laser beam through a partially transmissive mirror and a corner reflector. A laser beam direction control device is obtained, in which the deviation of the optical axis is detected by a four-quadrant photodetector and the deflection angle prism is driven so that the fluctuation of the optical axis becomes zero.

〔Example〕

 Next, the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a laser beam direction control device of the present invention.

In the embodiment shown in FIG. 1, the first tracking means is formed, and the reception telescope 1 and the transmission telescope 2 which are arranged in parallel and adjacent to each other and have the same reception magnification and transmission magnification and visible region light are arranged. The dichroic beam splitter 3 that allows the light to pass through and reflects the other region light, the imaging lens 4, the imaging camera 5 that images the flying object through the imaging lens 4 and outputs its position information, and the imaging camera 5 A target tracking circuit 12 that outputs a target tracking signal that directs the receiving telescope 1 and the transmission telescope 2 to the flying object so as to make the positional displacement of the flying object zero based on the output position information of the flying object 12 In addition, a control program is built-in, a transmission / reception system and a tracking system are mounted, and in the initial state, the transmission target telescope 2 and the reception telescope 1 of the transmission / reception system regularly scan the tracking target space in a predetermined scanning pattern. Continuous Given scanning motion for scanning, the target tracking circuitry After capturing the projectile by the scanning movement
A gimbal section 11 that gives a tracking motion by a target tracking signal provided from 12, and a laser device 13 that generates a laser beam,
And a partially transmissive mirror 14.

Further, as the second tracking means, a receiving telescope 1, a transmitting telescope 2, a dichroic beam splitter 3 are provided.
And the double-sided reflecting mirror 6 and the double-sided reflecting mirror 6 in a spatial degree of freedom 2
Automatic mirror gimbal 7 that can be controlled by a drive signal that is externally stopped and at a stop position, an interference filter 8 that blocks unnecessary components other than the transmitted laser beam such as background light, a condenser lens 9, and a condenser lens First four-quadrant photodetector 10 that detects the position of the captured flying object received through 9 in any of the four-quadrant detection regions and outputs the position information, and the position that the first quadrant photodetector 10 outputs A first angle error calculation circuit 21 for obtaining the displacement of the captured flying object from the direction of the transmitted laser beam, that is, an angle error based on the information, and the angle error output from the first angle error calculation circuit 21 are set to zero. A first drive circuit 22 for outputting a drive signal for causing the automatic mirror gimbal 7 to set the position of the double-sided reflecting mirror 6, and a laser device.
13 and a partially transmissive mirror 14.

Further, as means for forming the laser beam optical axis maintaining means, a laser device 13 and two prisms having a wedge-shaped cross section are combined to rotate one prism with respect to the other prism to correspond to the rotation angle. A deflection angle prism 20 with a variable emission angle, a partially transmissive mirror 14, a corner reflector 15, and a partially transmissive mirror 14 are transmitted through the corner reflector.
A condenser lens 23 for converging the laser light totally reflected by 15 and then reflected again by the partially transmissive mirror 14, and a second four-quadrant light detection which receives the output light of the condenser lens 23 and outputs its position information. Device 16, a second angle error calculation circuit 17 for calculating an angle error from the initial state of the generated laser beam based on the position information output from the second four-quadrant photodetector 16, and a declination prism drive unit 19 And the deflection angle prism drive unit 19 based on the output angle error of the second angle error calculation circuit 17.
And a second drive circuit 18 for generating a drive signal for driving the optical axis to maintain the optical axis by reducing the angular error to zero.

 Next, the operation of the embodiment shown in FIG. 1 will be described.

In the initial state, the gimbal portion 11 is regularly driven according to a predetermined scanning pattern, and the laser light output from the laser device 13 is transmitted through the light transmission path formed by the deflection prism 20, the partially transmissive mirror 14, and the double-sided reflected light 6. The reflected light or response light from the target flying object is captured by the receiving telescope 1 and guided to the dichroic beam splitter 3 by being guided to the telescope 2.

Of the received light guided to the dichroic beam splitter 3, the light in the visible light region is supplied to the imaging camera 5 through the imaging lens 4. The imaging camera 5 is held in a wide field of view as much as possible so that the target can be easily captured. In this way, the light received from the space scanned by the gimbal portion 11 is imaged in the visible region to continue the search for the flying object and to fly after the acquisition. The body position information is continuously supplied to the target tracking circuit 12. The target tracking circuit 12 knows the displacement of the flying object at the time of irradiation of the transmitted laser beam and the light receiving time from the positional information of the flying object based on the positional information, corrects this displacement to zero, and directs the outgoing laser beam to the flying object. A target tracking signal to be tracked is generated and supplied to the gimbal unit 11, and in this way, the receiving telescope 1 and the transmitting telescope 2 are always directed to follow the capturing flying object.

The above-described tracking operation is for causing the transmission telescope 2 and thus the reception telescope 1 to follow the capture flying object. Is required.

That is, of the received light guided to the dichroic beam splitter 3, those having a wavelength component other than the visible light region are reflected, projected to the double-sided reflecting mirror 6, and reflected and supplied to the interference filter 8. The interference filter 8 eliminates background light, scattered light, and other unnecessary components, and guides only necessary wavelength components to the first four-quadrant photodetector 10 through the condenser lens 9. The first four-quadrant photodetector 10 obtains position information of the captured projectile detected in any one of the four quadrant detection regions and supplies it to the first angle error calculation circuit 21. First four mentioned above
The light-receiving field of view of the quadrant photodetector 10 is set as narrow as possible in order to enhance the sensitivity of detecting an angular error, and is set to such a degree that a captured flying object can be detected while the imaging camera 5 is tracking a target.

The first angle error calculation circuit 21 calculates the angle error of the transmission laser beam with respect to the corrected flying object, and supplies this to the first drive circuit 22. The first drive circuit 22 generates a drive signal for driving the double-sided reflecting mirror 6 as an internal reflecting mirror common to the light-receiving system and the light-transmitting system so as to make the provided angular error zero, and supplies it to the automatic mirror gimbal 7. To do. In this way, the pointing direction of the transmitted laser beam emitted from the transmission telescope 2 can always be accurately and accurately tracked by the captured flying object.

As described above, in this embodiment, the reception magnification of the reception telescope 1 and the transmission magnification of the transmission telescope 2 are made to coincide with each other, and the direction control of the transmitted laser beam is used in combination with the automatic mirror gimbal that automatically corrects the positional displacement of the flying object. , It is possible to automatically control the tracking direction of the transmitted laser beam by the capture flying object. Further, the angle variation of the double-sided reflecting mirror 6 is also included in the above-mentioned tracking correction and is automatically corrected.

Now, the fluctuation control of the output beam from the laser device 13 is performed as follows. The laser beam is partially transmitted by the transmissive mirror 14, the transmitted light is reflected by the corner reflector 15, and is passed through a condenser lens 28 to a second four-quadrant photodetector 16
To detect the beam focusing position. Next, the second angle error calculation circuit 17 outputs an angle error, and the second drive circuit 18 and the deflection angle prism drive unit 19 control the deflection angle prism 20 to automatically correct the variation of the laser beam. .

In this way, the optical axis fluctuation of the transmitted laser beam and the angular fluctuation of the internal reflecting mirror can be automatically corrected to enable highly accurate target tracking.

[Effects of the Invention] As described above, the present invention introduces the automatic correction of the laser beam optical axis dedicated to the laser device and the automatic correction for both the positional displacement of the light receiving light source and the directivity control of the laser beam to introduce the target positional displacement. By automatically correcting, the optical axis fluctuation of the output beam of the laser device and the angular fluctuation of the internal reflecting mirror that controls the direction of the laser beam can be automatically corrected, so that highly accurate laser beam direction control is possible. The laser beam direction control device can be realized.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a laser beam direction control device of the present invention. 1 ... Reception telescope, 2 ... Transmission telescope, 3 ... Dichroic beam splitter, 4 ... Imaging lens, 5 ... Imaging camera, 6 ... Double-sided reflector, 7 ... Automatic mirror gimbal, 8
...... Interference filter, 9 ...... Condensing lens, 10 ...... First 4
Quadrant photodetector, 11 ... Gimbal part, 12 ... Target tracking circuit, 13 ... Laser device, 14 ... Partially transmissive mirror, 15 ...
… Corner reflector, 16 …… Second four-quadrant photodetector, 17
...... Second angle error calculation circuit, 18 …… Second drive circuit,
19 …… Declination prism drive, 20 …… Declination prism, 21…
... first angle error calculation circuit, 22 ... first drive circuit, 23
……Condenser lens.

Claims (3)

(57) [Claims] 1. A laser beam direction control device for directing the transmitted laser beam to the projectile while receiving reflected light or response light from the transmitted laser beam transmitted to the projectile, and equipped with a transmission / reception system and a tracking system. First tracking means for scanning the tracking target space of the flying object with a predetermined scanning pattern by the light emitting and receiving system and causing the light sending and receiving system and the tracking system to track the flying object after the flying object is captured, While continuously and automatically controlling the pointing direction of the sending laser beam so as to correct the positional displacement of the flying object between sending the sending laser beam by the sending and receiving system and receiving reflected light or response light. Second tracking means for performing tracking correction of the flying object while automatically correcting optical axis fluctuations in the light transmitting / receiving system, and the second tracking means for the second tracking means. The laser beam direction control device, characterized in that it comprises a laser beam optical axis maintaining means for automatically correcting the variation while detecting the variation of the optical axis of the laser beam. 2. The second tracking means matches the transmission magnification and the reception magnification, and transmits and receives the laser beam by a transmission telescope and a reception telescope which are arranged in parallel adjacent to each other, and the transmission and reception system. , One common double-sided reflecting mirror is arranged in such a manner that the spatial position can be controlled, and while the displacement of the projectile is acquired by the four-quadrant photodetector, this displacement includes the angular variation of the double-sided reflecting mirror. The laser beam direction control device according to claim 1, wherein the laser beam direction control device is configured to perform automatic correction. 3. The laser beam optical axis maintaining means is provided with a deflection prism capable of varying an emission angle in a light transmitting path of the laser beam, and a part of the laser beam is extracted through a partially transmissive mirror and a corner reflector. The laser beam according to claim 1, wherein the deviation of the optical axis is detected by a four-quadrant photodetector and the deflection angle prism is driven so that the fluctuation of the optical axis becomes zero. Direction control device.