I get to play with lots of cool stuff! One i use is a laser tracker – basically a robotic head which spins 360 degrees around with a laser coming out of it, it looks a bit like a gun turret shooting out laser death rays.
What it does it measure the position of the head (what rotation angle it’s at) and the distance to the thing you’re shining the laser at (like say, a carbon fiber piece of an airplane wing) and from that it measures the XYZ 3D position in space, very cool!
Comments
Dan commented on :
If you can see this, start at 10:40, it’s 2 of my colleagues measuring a piece of string with a laser tracker with Alan Davies on BBC Horizon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQU1AcWUnpo&feature=related