Measurement 165 (2020) 108165

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Measurement
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/measurement

Performance evaluation of laser trackers using the network method

Ling Wang a,b, Bala Muralikrishnan b,⇑, Octavio Icasio Hernandez c, Craig Shakarji b,
Daniel Sawyer b
a
School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, China Jiliang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province 310018, People’s Republic of China
b
Dimensional Metrology Group, Sensor Science Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, United States
c
Centro Nacional de Metrología: Apdo. Postal 1-100 Centro, 76000 Querétaro, Mexico

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Laser trackers (LTs) are widely used for large-scale dimensional metrology. Periodic LT performance eval-
Received 24 February 2020 uation is a key aspect in ensuring measurement reliability. The existing documentary standards for LT
Received in revised form 19 June 2020 performance evaluation require scale bars and special artifacts that are often unavailable for many LT
Accepted 29 June 2020
users. A network-based method is considered in this paper as a simple and effective approach to evaluate
Available online 6 July 2020
LT performance without the need for expensive artifacts or reference instruments. In this method, a set of
fixed targets are measured from different locations of the LT. The reference values for the lengths
Keywords:
between pairs of targets are determined by incorporating the geometrical error model of the LT (i.e.,
Laser tracker
Performance evaluation
the LT data from each location are corrected for systematic geometric misalignments, quantities that
Network method are also obtained from the same data), thus the LT under test is itself used to calibrate the lengths in
Geometrical error model parameters the network. Subsequently, these length values are used as references to evaluate the LT performance.
We validate this method of establishing reference lengths by comparing the values for select lengths
in the network against more traditional line-of-sight interferometry. We show that the uncertainties in
the reference lengths obtained in this manner are sufficiently small in comparison to the maximum per-
missible error (MPE) specifications so that they can be used for performance evaluation. A case study
using three LTs is presented in this paper. The results obtained from that case study is also verified by
a simulation based on the ASME B89.4.19 standard, showing the feasibility of the proposed network-
based LT performance evaluation method.
Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
1.1. Background and objectives
Due to their large working volume, high accuracy, and excellent
portability, laser trackers (LTs) are widely accepted and used in
engineering applications and scientific research. Undoubtedly, LT
measurement performance is a key concern for users, especially
because factors such as environmental conditions, vibration during
use, installation, transport, can degrade performance over their
lifetime. Performing a periodic evaluation is therefore a critical
aspect for ensuring that an instrument is operating within its per-
formance specifications yielding reliable data, and that the mea-
surement results are metrologically traceable. Performance
evaluation tests, clearly, must be sensitive to the different error
sources in the LT, thus modeling and understanding LT errors is a
key aspect in developing useful performance test procedures.
There are several published documentary standards for perfor-
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: bala.muralikrishnan@nist.gov (B. Muralikrishnan).
mance evaluation of LTs, such as the ASME B89.4.19 [1], VDI/VDE
2617-10 [2], and the ISO 10360-10 [3]. The tests described in these
standards are comprehensive, require specialized equipment, and
therefore not suitable as a field check procedure. An interim test
was described by Lee at al. in a National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST) internal report NISTIR 8016 [4], for perfor-
mance evaluation of laser trackers in the field but this test also
required the use of specialized equipment, i.e., a scale bar.
In this context, we describe a method based on a stationary net-
work of targets, referred to as the network method, for perfor-
mance evaluation of laser trackers. The network method is
widely documented in the literature, and its applicability in
large-scale metrology is described by Calkins [5]. The basic idea
of the network method is to obtain ‘‘average” point coordinates
from measurements on a set of stationary targets from multiple
locations of an instrument. While this averaging process may be
as straightforward as determining the rotation and translation
parameters of each of the LTs with respect to the LT in the first
position, a more complex bundle adjustment with weighted resid-
uals is shown to provide better estimates of the target coordinates
[5]. However, the averaging in the bundle adjustment process does

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measurement.2020.108165
0263-2241/Published by Elsevier Ltd.
2 L. Wang et al. / Measurement 165 (2020) 108165
not guarantee that the systematic errors in an LT are removed. In
order to obtain more accurate estimates of the target coordinates,
we fit the laser tracker geometric error model as part of the opti-
mization process, thus largely removing the systematic errors of
the LT in the coordinate determination, as reported by Hughes
et al. [6]. We validate this approach through several line-of-sight
(LOS) interferometer measurements and quantify the uncertainty
in the inter-target distances. We show how these inter-target dis-
tances may be used as the reference lengths for evaluating the per-
formance of LTs, thus the method does not require the use of
specialized equipment such as a scale bar.
Calkins [5], in his dissertation, noted two potential applications
of the network method. The primary application and the focus of
his dissertation was to use the network method to determine the
uncertainty of the LT. Calkins also notes performance evaluation
as a potential application of the network method, as does Hughes
et al. [6]. We want to clearly note that the novel work described
in this paper is not the network method itself, rather, it is the
demonstration of the network method for laser trackers with care-
ful consideration of the factors involved in this process, and the
advantages and limitations of the method. LT performance evalua-
tion using the network method has not been carefully documented
in the literature to the best of our knowledge.
Next, we briefly review different performance evaluation test
procedures described in the literature leading up to published per-
formance evaluation documentary standards and the motivation
for the work described in this paper.
1.2. Literature review
The laser tracker was invented at the National Institute of Stan-
dards and Technology (NIST) in the mid-1980s. In their seminal
paper on LTs, Lau et al. [7] describe the technology and some error
sources, thus providing insight into how users might test for those
errors. There have been several studies since, that describe differ-
ent LT error sources. Zhuang and Roth [8] quantify mirror center
offset error. Ouyang et al. [9], Gassner and Ruland [10], Martin
and Chetwynd [11], Giniotis et al. [12], and Muralikrishnan et al.
[13] describe modeling and detecting different error sources asso-
ciated with the angle encoders. Zhang et al. [14] propose a method
of measuring the tilt error between the transit axis and the stand-
ing axis of the laser tracker. These different error sources have been
combined into a model that captures the combined effect on the
measured point coordinates. Such models have been presented
by Loser and Kyle [15] for LTs with a beam steering mirror and
by Muralikrishnan et al. [16] for LTs without a beam steering mir-
ror. Conte et al. [17,18] developed a kinematic model for a laser
tracker which was compared with a geometric error model of
LTs. After presenting a method for modeling LT systems, Lin and
Lu [19] analyzed the effects of mirror-mechanism dimension errors
and corner-cube alignment errors. Nasr et al. [20] determined the
azimuth angle encoder errors of their LT based on three methods,
which include: an artifact-based method of NIST, a multi-target
network technique of National Physical Laboratory (NPL), and a
method based on precision angular indexing table technique.
Hughes et al. [6] propose a model based on the NIST model that
describe the effects of different LT error sources. We present the
above only to illustrate the fact that there is a significant body of
work done to understand and quantify the effect of different LT
errors on the measured point coordinates. The study of error
sources is not the primary focus of this paper; rather, the focus
here is the evaluation of the performance of a laser tracker.
While there has been considerable literature in identifying LT
error sources, that is not the case with performance evaluation of
LTs. Osawa et al. [21] developed a compact and accurate LT in
2001. The performance of this LT was checked by a high precision
coordinate measuring machine (CMM), which may not be available
for most LT users. Conte et al. [22] focused on the performance of
different LT calibration strategies based on network measure-
ments, and then determined whether nominal distances are
needed. Zhou et al. [23] proposed a bundle adjustment method
in order to evaluate LT coordinate precision in a large-size coordi-
nate measuring system. Morse et al. [24] noted that published
standards and guidelines for evaluating LT performance focus on
the measurement of a series of static point-to-point distances
and the errors that are reported from those measurements. As a
result, they developed a series of tests characterizing a laser track-
er’s performance by collecting data from a moving target to quan-
tify dynamic performance of LTs. Sugahara et al. [25] reported the
performance test of an LT and showed the following items: the
drift of the output, the long-term variation of the output, and the
reproducibility of point measurement. Based on a D-H error model,
Acero et al. [26] used an indexed metrology platform in order to
enable the evaluation of different working volumes of their LT
using the same physical calibrated gauge. This gauge remained still
during the verification, and the LT rotated with the platform. The
nominal distances of this gauge were measured with a CMM.
Since the mid-1990s, there had been increasing calls to develop
standardized test procedures for performance evaluation so that
users and manufacturers do not have to develop individual or
idiosyncratic test procedures to assess LT performance. The ASME
B89.4.19-2006 [1] was the first performance standard released
for this purpose. The VDI/VDE 2617-10 [2] and the ISO 10360-10
[3] followed some years later. Muralikrishnan et al. [27] provide
a comparison of the different documentary standards highlighting
the advantages and limitations of each, while Nasr et al. [28]
describe the ASME B89.4.19 laser tracker verification facility at
the NPL in the UK. As mentioned earlier in Section 1.1, the test pro-
cedures described in the documentary standards are comprehen-
sive and require special artifacts and are typically performed in
controlled environmental conditions (note that controlled environ-
ment is not a requirement; testing anywhere within the rated
operating environmental conditions is acceptable, and a compliant
instrument should pass anywhere within those conditions).
The motivation for this work is to be able to develop a test pro-
cedure that can be implemented in the field and that does not
require specialized equipment. A network-based method is such
an approach that can be adopted for performance evaluation. The
method requires no calibrated artifact, such as a scale bar, and
can be performed in a room of reasonable size. The process
involves measuring a set of stationary targets from several LT loca-
tions. The data from these measurements are used to calibrate the
inter-target distances that are subsequently used to evaluate the
performance of the LT.
1.3. Terminology and organization
Before we proceed, we note the following terminology used in
this paper. Coordinates obtained using just the bundle adjustment
are referred to as the composite coordinates, while coordinates
obtained when performing the bundle adjustment while simulta-
neously fitting to the LT error model are referred to as the cor-
rected composite coordinates. The inter-target distances
calculated using the composite coordinates are referred to as com-
posite lengths while, inter-target distances calculated using cor-
rected composite coordinates are referred to as corrected
composite lengths. In this paper, we use the corrected composite
coordinates to obtain the reference values for performance evalua-
tion of the LTs, aiming to develop an LT performance evaluation
method based on the network without the need for scale bars or
special artifacts.
 L. Wang et al. / Measurement 165 (2020) 108165
We used three LTs for our study, one from each of three manu-
facturers (identified as A, B, C). The software from manufacturer A
allows us to turn off the error model parameters, thus significantly
increasing the errors in the measured point coordinates (which, as
will be seen later, allowed the systematic error reduction of the
network method to be accentuated). In this paper, A1 refers to
the measurements made in this uncompensated mode, while A2
refers to measurements made after turning on the error model
parameters for the LT from manufacturer A.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The pro-
posed method of evaluating LT performance is described in Sec-
tion 2. We validate the uncertainties of the corrected composite
lengths derived by the network method in Section 3. We describe
a case study for the proposed LT performance evaluation method
based on the network measurement in Section 4, and finally pre-
sent discussions and conclusions in Sections 5 and 6, respectively.
2. Procedure
2.1. Overview
The bundle adjustment process described by Calkins [5] is a
nested optimization method where the unknown parameters are
the composite coordinates of the targets and the rotation/transla-
tion parameters of the LTs. We first modified this process to a sin-
gle optimization that determines the composite coordinates of the
targets and the rotation/translation parameters of the LTs. We ver-
ified that our non-nested approach provides identical values for
the unknown parameters as the nested approach of Calkins [5].
We subsequently modified the optimization to also fit the LT error
model parameters as part of the optimization. Thus, we determine
the corrected composite coordinates (C), the rotation/translation
parameters of the LTs (M), and the LT error model parameters (P)
by a single optimization, where the objective function is given by:
X2m Xn
min f ðP; M; CÞ ¼ min j¼1 i¼1 ½ðwl; i;j  el; i;j Þ2 þ ðwh; i;j
þ ðwu;  eu; i;j Þ2 
i;j
In Eq. (1):
n is the number of targets and m is the number of LT locations.
P is the set of error model parameters of the LT. There are 15
model parameters for trackers without a beam steering mirror
and 20 parameters for trackers with a beam steering mirror,
see references [15,16] for more details. Thus, P is a vector whose
size is either 1  15 or 1  20.
M is the set of three translation and three rotation (for a total of
6) parameters for each of the LT positions with respect to the
reference position. Because we consider the first LT position
to be the reference, M is a vector of size 1  6 (m  1).
C is a matrix of composite coordinates of the n targets in the ref-
erence position and therefore of size n  3 matrix.
el; i;j ; eh; i;j ; and eu; i;j are the residuals along the ranging direction,
the horizontal angle and vertical angle directions for the jth tar-
get measured from the ith LT position.
wl; i;j ; wh; i;j ; and wu; i;j are the weights assigned to the residuals.
See Ref. [5] for details. The initial weights (wl; i;j ; wh; i;j ; and
wu; i;j in Eq. (1)) used for the optimization may be generated
from the MPEs of the LT. In our case, we determine the initial
weights as the inverse of the initial estimates of the correspond-
ing standard uncertainties, which we choose to be 0.0076 mm
for range and 100 for angles. At the end of the optimization pro-
cess, the standard deviations of the range, the horizontal angle,
and the vertical angle are calculated. These are then used to
determine the weights for the next iteration of the optimization
3
described in Eq. (1). This process is repeated until the weights
converge.
The overall procedure is described next, while experimental
details are described in Sections 2.2 and 3.
Part I – Data acquisition:
(1) We perform a network measurement with n targets and m
LT positions. In each LT position, both front-face and back-
face measurements are separately performed (i.e., they are
not averaged.) Therefore, we obtain 2  m sets of n-triples (x,
y, z) using the LT under test.
Part II – Calibration: Determining composite lengths and
their uncertainties
This section is for informational purposes only. The composite
lengths are not used for performance evaluation.
(2) We arbitrarily choose the frame of the first LT location as the
reference/world coordinate system. An optimization is per-
formed to determine the composite coordinates of the n targets
in the frame of the first LT location. The rotation/translation
parameters of each LT location are also determined in the opti-
mization. The optimization minimizes the weighted residuals in
the frame of each LT, where residuals are the differences
between the measured spherical coordinates (in the frame of
a given LT) and the composite coordinates transformed to the
same frame. The calculation of the residuals and their weights
is described by Calkins [5].
(3) We then calculate the (uncorrected) composite lengths in
the reference coordinate system. We do not use these as the ref-
erence for performance evaluation of the LT (as this will be done
with the corrected composite lengths). We only calculate these
to show that the residuals are larger than those when we
include the LT error model in the fit (see Part III). This educa-
tional information is derived without any burden of requiring
additional measurements with the LT.
 eh; i;j Þ2 (4) We calculate the standard deviations of the residuals
ð1Þ (el; i;j ; eh; i;j ; and eu; i;j Þ along the ranging and the horizontal and
vertical angle directions of the LT. We consider these standard
deviations as the LT uncertainty, i.e., the standard uncertainty
of a point coordinate obtained from the LT that was used for
the measurements. Here, we are assuming that there are no
remaining systematic effects due to the LT, the environment,
etc. Clearly, this assumption may not be valid because the LT
may have uncompensated geometric misalignments. There
may also be systematic errors from the environment and other
sources. The model errors are accounted for in Part III, but other
systematic error sources may remain; we discuss this as a lim-
itation of this method in Section 5.
(5) A Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is then performed to deter-
mine the uncertainty in the composite length as follows. The
input to the MC simulation are the LT uncertainties obtained
as the standard deviation of the residuals (el; i;j ; eh; i;j ; and
eu; i;j Þ. These uncertainties are then propagated to each of the
n measured points from each of the m LT stations. An optimiza-
tion is performed per Eq. (1) (where the weights are also equal
to the inverse of the standard deviation of the residuals) to
determine the composite coordinates and thus, the composite
lengths. Note that LT error model parameters are not deter-
mined as part of the optimization. This process is repeated
300 times to determine a set of 300 composite lengths. The
standard uncertainty of each length is the standard deviation
of the 300 samples. We calculate these values only to show that
the uncertainty in the corrected composite lengths (see Part III)
are smaller because the error model accounts for a significant
portion of the residuals in the measured data.
4 L. Wang et al. / Measurement 165 (2020) 108165
Part III – Calibration: Determining corrected composite
lengths and their uncertainties
(6) An optimization is performed to determine the corrected
composite coordinates of the n targets in the frame of the first
LT location. The laser tracker error model parameters and the
rotation/translation parameters of each LT location are also
determined in the optimization. The objective function was
shown earlier in Eq. (1).
(7) We then calculate the corrected composite lengths in the
reference coordinate system, which we use as the reference
for performance evaluation of the LT.
(8) We calculate the standard deviations of the residuals
(el; i;j ; eh; i;j ; and eu; i;j Þ along the ranging and the horizontal and
vertical directions of the LT. We consider these standard devia-
tions as the LT uncertainty, i.e., the standard uncertainty of a
point coordinate obtained from the LT that was used for the
measurements. Here, we are assuming that there are no
remaining systematic effects due to the environment and other
sources, but that assumption may not be entirely valid. We dis-
cuss this in Section 5. Note that the LT uncertainties so calcu-
lated can be used as the LT’s contribution to the overall
uncertainty of a point coordinate in any subsequent measure-
ment performed by the LT. Thus, the advantage of the network
method is that we not only recover the error model parameters
of the LT but also an estimate of the uncertainty that is due to
the LT.
(9) An MC simulation is then performed to determine the
uncertainty in the composite length, as discussed in Step 4 ear-
lier. The inputs to the MC simulation are the LT uncertainties
obtained as the standard deviation of the residuals (el; i;j ; eh; i;j ;
and eu; i;j Þ. These uncertainties are then propagated to each of
the n measured points from each of the m LT stations. An opti-
mization is performed per Eq. (1) (where the weights are also
equal to the inverse of the standard deviation of the residuals)
to determine the corrected composite coordinates and, thus,
the corrected composite lengths. This process is repeated 300
times to determine a set of 300 corrected composite lengths.
The standard uncertainty of each length is the standard devia-
tion of the 300 samples. This method assumes that the effects
of systematic errors in the LT measurements are sufficiently
removed in the corrected composite lengths and is not signifi-
cant (see Section 5).
(10) We validate the uncertainty claims by measuring selected
pairs of targets using LOS interferometry method (Wang et al.,
[29]) and demonstrate that the measured errors are consistent
with our estimates of the expanded uncertainty.
Part IV – Performance evaluation:
(11) We consider each position of the LT as a test position and
calculate the length between pairs of targets using data
obtained from that position. Note that while LT model parame-
ters were obtained in Part III, they are only used to obtain more
accurate estimates of the composite coordinates. The data
obtained from the LT is not corrected using these model param-
eters for purposes of performance evaluation.
(12) We then derive the length errors between the measured
lengths in each LT position and the corrected composite lengths.
(13) We calculate the MPE values for all the lengths measured
from each LT position based on specifications provided by LT
manufacturers.
(14) We use a 4:1 simple acceptance decision rule (ASME
B89.7.3.1 [30]]) to determine whether an LT has passed the test.
First, we compare the MPE values to four times the expanded
uncertainties (4U) for each length measured from each LT posi-
tion (see Part III, step 9 for method to evaluate uncertainty of
the reference length). We discard the lengths that do not satisfy
the U < MPE/4 condition as the uncertainty is not small enough
to determine conformance. For the lengths satisfying U < MPE/4,
we compare their MPEs and length errors. The LT has passed the
test procedure if all length errors are smaller than the corre-
sponding MPEs for the lengths satisfying the U < MPE/4
condition.
2.2. Experimental setup
The proposed performance evaluation based on the network
method was realized through an experiment with n = 19 targets
and m = 5 LT positions. The position of the targets and the LT
was based on Hughes et al., [6], shown in Fig. 1. In the experiment,
all 19 targets were measured successively from the front-face and
back-face modes by the LT in each of the five positions. As a result,
there are 10 sets of 19-triplets (x, y, z) from our experiment. Posi-
tion 2 is at the same location as Position 1, except that the LT is
physically rotated about the vertical axis by 180° by re-orienting
the stand. This ensures that the targets are measured from two dif-
ferent sets of azimuth angles. More information about the posi-
tions can be found in Hughes et al. [6].
We have three LTs in our laboratory, one from each of three dif-
ferent manufacturers, as mentioned earlier. They are identified as
A, B, and C. Their structures and error models are given in Refs.
[15,16]. One of the LTs has the laser source in the base, and a beam
steering mirror is used to deflect the beam to the target. Another LT
has the source also in the base but uses fiber to launch the beam.
The third LT has the source directly mounted on the head. The
entire 19-target and 5-position experiment was separately per-
formed using all three LTs. The software for manufacturer A
allowed us to turn off the model parameters. Thus, we performed
the experiments using LT A with, and without the model parame-
ters turned on. The data are identified as LT A1 and LT A2,
respectively.
For each LT, we calculated a total of 171 lengths from 19 targets.
Thus, we have 171 composite lengths and 171 corrected composite
lengths. Because there are 5 LT positions and 2 modes (front-face
or back-face) of measurement from each LT position, we have a
total of 171  5  2 = 1710 lengths that can be used for perfor-
mance evaluation.
3. Calibration results
After measuring the n targets from the m LT positions, we per-
form the optimization described in Section 2 in Parts II and III. First,
we only determine the composite coordinates (i.e., without fitting
to the LT error model) and the uncertainty in the composite lengths
as described in Part II. These uncertainties are shown in Table 1. In
a separate optimization process, we determine the corrected com-
posite coordinates and the uncertainties in the corrected compos-
ite lengths as described in Part III. These are also shown in Table 1.
Table 1 shows that the LT uncertainty (k = 1) (i.e., the standard
deviation of the residuals) decrease when we correct the measured
data using the error models, and the uncertainties of the horizontal
and vertical angles are less than or equal to one arc second. These
values are used to determine the uncertainties of the composite
and corrected composite lengths as described in Section 2.1 Parts
II and III. The standard uncertainties of the corrected composite
lengths are smaller than the ones of the composite length shown
in Table 1, which implies the error model improves the repeatabil-
ity of the tracker for the lengths measured.
We assume that the mean errors in the composite and corrected
composite lengths are small. That is, the differences between the
unknown true or reference value of each length and the corre-
 L. Wang et al. / Measurement 165 (2020) 108165 5

2000 2000
9
19 10
1500 6 11 1500 3
12
Tracker
1000 position
14 12
Y coordinate (mm)

5 1000

Z coordinate (mm)
Tracker
500 position 5

2 Tracker Tracker 500

0 3 18 5 position 8 position 2 Tracker Tracker
3 1/2 19 position 4 position 1/2 15
1 18
0 17 11
-500 16

Tracker
8
17 7 -500 Tracker
-1000 4 position
4 6 position 3 9
13 4
7
-1500 -1000
14 15 10
16 1 5 13
-1500
-6000 -5000 -4000 -3000 -2000 -1000 0 1000 -6000 -5000 -4000 -3000 -2000 -1000 0 1000
X coordinate (mm) X coordinate (mm)
(a) (b)

(c)
Fig. 1. Network layout of targets and LT positions (diamonds with crosses represent target positions): (a) plan view (b) side view (c) view of artifacts.

Table 1
Standard uncertainties of LT point coordinates, composite lengths, and corrected composite lengths.

Laser Without LT error model With LT error model

tracker
LT uncertainty LT uncertainty LT uncertainty Typical LT uncertainty LT uncertainty LT uncertainty Typical
along range (i.e., along horizontal along vertical standard along range along horizontal along vertical standard
the standard angle (i.e., the angle (i.e., the uncertainty (i.e., the angle (i.e., the angle (i.e., the uncertainty
deviation of standard deviation standard (k = 1) of standard standard deviation standard (k = 1) of
range residual) of horizontal angle deviation of composite deviation of of horizontal angle deviation of corrected
(lm) residual) (00 ) vertical angle length (lm) range residual) residual) (00 ) vertical angle composite
residual) (00 ) (lm) residual) (00 ) length (lm)
A1 77 7.6 3.8 33 3.2 0.8 1.0 3
A2 4 1.0 2.6 4 3.1 0.9 1.0 3
B 2 1.8 1.2 3 1.0 0.7 0.8 2
C 33 0.7 2.7 10 3.8 0.5 0.6 3

sponding corrected composite and composite lengths are small so responding target pairs of these 15 lengths are 1–4, 1–5, 1–7, 1–8,
that the standard deviations of the lengths are reasonable esti- 1–10, 5–7, 5–8, 5–9, 7–14, 7–17, 10–11, 10–12, 16–17, 16–18, and
mates of the uncertainties in the length. In order to validate this 16–19, whose lengths are relatively easier to measure by the LOS
assumption, 15 out of the 171 lengths in the 19-target network method. These LOS lengths are considered as the reference for this
are also measured by the LOS method (Wang et al. [29]). The cor- validation process. The length errors between the corrected com-
6 L. Wang et al. / Measurement 165 (2020) 108165

1.2 1.2
LT A
1 LT A 1
1 LT A 1
2 LT A
2
0.8 LT B 0.8 LT B
LT C
LT C
R

R
0.6 0.6

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2

0 0
0 5 10 15 0 5 10 15
Length number Length number
(a) (b)
Fig. 2. Ratios (normalized errors) of 15 inter-target distances in the 19-target network: (a) for composite length errors (b) for corrected composite length errors.

posite lengths and the LOS lengths are obtained. In order to
demonstrate the validity of our method, we compute the ratio R
between length errors and expanded uncertainties (k = 2). This
ratio is given by:
 
 
 
 eLC 
R ¼ qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 2 2 
 U C þ U LOS 
where eLC is the length error between the composite length (or cor-
rected composite length) and the LOS measured length; UC is the
expanded uncertainty (k = 2) of the composite length (or corrected
composite length); ULOS is the expanded uncertainty (k = 2) of the
length measured by the LOS method. For the purposes of this study,
we consider the LOS uncertainty ULOS to be 2  16 = 32 lm. This
value is obtained from manufacturer’s specifications for the LT that
was used to establish the LOS measurement.
As shown in Fig. 2, the ratio R (i.e., the normalized error) for the
15 lengths are all smaller than one except for the case of length No.
1, tracker C and even for that one case, the normalized error is
approximately equal to one. This result shows that the errors of
the composite and corrected composite lengths are smaller than
our estimate of the expanded uncertainties, which at the (k = 2)
level have about a 95% level of confidence. The claimed uncertain-
ties are consistent with our assumption that the mean error in the
composite and corrected composite lengths are small relative to
the uncertainty estimated using the standard deviations. It is
important to mention that if the absolute value of R is greater than
0.5 and close to one, then uncertainties are evaluated in a realistic
and balanced way; this is the case for the evaluated lengths in
Fig. 2. If R is close to zero, then either the error in the numerator
is small or one or both uncertainties in the denominator are too
conservative. For users of the network method for performance
evaluation of LTs, we note that reference LOS measurements (or
a calibrated scale bar) may be necessary only from the point of
establishing metrological traceability; the results shown here indi-
cate that the LT is capable of self-calibrating the network with low
As addressed in the last section, each individual position of the
LT is considered as a test position for the purposes of performance
evaluation. The measured data from the 10 LT positions result in
171  10 test lengths.
The next step is the determination of the MPE specification for
each of the 171 lengths from each of the 10 LT positions. The MPE
ð2Þ specifications are calculated by a formula based on the manufac-
turer’s specification (or otherwise specified) cited to the ISO
10360–10 standard [3], using the parameters shown in Eq. (3)
and Fig. 3.
MPE ¼ ½e2R1 sin a1 þ e2R2 sin a2 þ e2R0 ðsin a1 þ sin a2 Þ
2 2 2
þ e2T1 cos2 a1 þ e2T2 cos2 a2 
1
2 ð3Þ
where eR1 and eR2 are the MPEs for range measurement to targets 1
and 2, respectively, eR0 is the MPE of the R0 error in the range (i.e.,
zero error), and eT1 and eT2 are the MPEs of the transverse errors to
targets 1 and 2, respectively. See ISO 10360–10 [3] for the detailed
description.
As an example, consider a hypothetical specification of
eR1 = eR2 = 0.01 mm, eR0 = 0, eT1 = 0.01 + 0.005  R1/1000 mm,
and eT2 = 0.01 + 0.005  R2/1000 mm, where R1 and R2 are the
distances (in millimeters) between the LT and the ends of the
length (Points P1 and P2), shown in Fig. 3; If the coordinates of
Points P1 and P2 are known in Fig. 3, then the MPE of the length
d can be calculated based on Eq. (3). For example, suppose the
range, horizontal and vertical (zenith) angle to Point P1 are
500 mm, 30°, and 70°, respectively, and the range, horizontal and
vertical angle to Point P2 are 2000 mm, 60°, and 90°, respectively,
then from the geometry, a1 = 44.1° and alpha a2 = 79.7°. From
the manufacturer’s specification, eR1 = 0.01 mm, eT1 = 0.013 mm,
eR2 = 0.01 mm, and eT2 = 0.020 mm. Thus, the MPE for the length
so positioned is 0.015 mm.
P1 P2
Point 1 Point 2

uncertainties.

4. Performance evaluation results α1 P1 P1 = d

α2 OP1 = R 1
OP2 = R 2
The previous section described how we established the refer-
ence lengths (the corrected composite lengths) between pairs of Laser
targets, and the uncertainties in those lengths. In this section, we Tracker O

will show how we can use those reference lengths to assess the
performance of LTs. Fig. 3. Geometry for MPE calculation (ISO 10360-10 [3]).
 L. Wang et al. / Measurement 165 (2020) 108165 7

After the MPEs are determined (one for each length and tracker
location), the next step is to adopt a decision rule to determine
whether the LT meets the specification. As mentioned earlier in Sec-
tion 2.1, we adopt the 4:1 Simple Acceptance decision rule, which
states that the LT has passed the test if the error does not exceed
the MPE, and the expanded uncertainty (U) in the reference length
is no larger than one-fourth the MPE (MPE/4). Thus, we first com-
pare the MPE against four times the expanded uncertainty and iden-
tify those lengths for which we can determine conformance. This is
shown for LTs A1, A2, B, and C in Figs. 4(a), 5(a), 6(a), and 7(a), respec-
tively. There are 1648 MPE values that are larger than or equal to the
corresponding 4Us for LT A1. For LTs A2, B and C, there are 1654,
1710, and 1062 lengths, respectively, that meet the 4:1 criteria.
These lengths are therefore used for performance evaluation.
After we identify the lengths that meet the 4:1 criteria, we plot
the MPEs vs the length errors for each LT. This is shown for LTs A1,

0.08 0.35 1.5

Length tests Length tests Two-face tests
0.3
0.06
0.25
1
MPE (mm)

MPE (mm)

MPE (mm)
0.2
0.04
0.15
0.5
0.1
0.02
0.05

0 0 0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0 0.5 1 1.5
4U (mm) |Error| (mm) |Error| (mm)
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 4. Comparison of MPE, 4U, and measured errors for LT A1 (a): MPE vs 4U, (b) MPEs vs length errors, (c) MPEs vs two-face errors.

0.08 0.15 0.25

Length tests Length tests Two-face tests
0.2
0.06
0.1
MPE (mm)

MPE (mm)
MPE (mm)

0.15
0.04
0.1
0.05
0.02
0.05

0 0 0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0 0.1 0.2
4U (mm) |Error| (mm) |Error| (mm)
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 5. Comparison of MPE, 4U, and measured errors for LT A2 (a): MPE vs 4U, (b) MPEs vs length errors, (c) MPEs vs two-face errors.

0.1 0.15 0.2

Length tests Length tests Two-face tests
0.08
0.15
MPE (mm)

MPE (mm)

0.1
MPE (mm)

0.06
0.1
0.04
0.05
0.05
0.02

0 0 0
0 0.05 0.1 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2
4U (mm) |Error| (mm) |Error| (mm)
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 6. Comparison of MPE, 4U, and measured errors for LT B (a): MPE vs 4U, (b) MPEs vs length errors, (c) MPEs vs two-face errors.
8 L. Wang et al. / Measurement 165 (2020) 108165

0.08 0.6
0.15
Length tests Length tests Two-face tests
0.5
0.06
0.4
MPE (mm)

MPE (mm)

MPE (mm)
0.1
0.04 0.3

0.05 0.2
0.02
0.1

0 0 0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0 0.2 0.4 0.6
4U (mm) |Error| (mm) |Error| (mm)

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 7. Comparison of MPE, 4U, and measured errors for LT C (a): MPE vs 4U, (b) MPEs vs length errors, (c) MPEs vs two-face errors.

Table 2
Comparison results: MPE, four times expanded uncertainties, and errors.

Laser Length measurement tests based on the network method Two-face measurement tests
tracker
Number of Number of conforming Number of length Percentage of Number of Number of two-face Percentage of
name
measured length measurements measurements where failed length measured two- measurements where failed two-face
lengths with MPE  4U |Error| > MPE measurements face errors |Error| > MPE measurements
A1 1710 1648 1042 63.2% 95 95 100%
A2 1710 1654 87 5.3% 95 80 84.2%
B 1710 1710 234 13.7% 95 9 9.5%
C 1710 1062 316 29.8% 95 95 100%

A2, B, and C in Figs. 4(b), 5(b), 6(b), and 7(b), respectively. We find
that the length errors are larger than the corresponding MPE for
1042 out of the 1648 lengths, i.e., 63.2%, for LT A1 as shown in
Table 2. For LTs A2, B, and C, these percentages are 5.3%, 13.7%,
and 29.8%, respectively, as shown in Table 2.
Finally, because we measured front-face and back-face mea-
surements separately from each LT position, we also calculate
the errors of the 19  5 = 95 two-face measurements, as well as
their corresponding claimed MPEs that are based on the ISO
10360–10 standard. Note the MPE specification for two-face error
is simply twice the transverse specification, i.e., MPE = 2eT. Because
the two-face test involves essentially zero-length measurements
made on a single, stationary retroreflector, the uncertainty in a
two-face test is exceedingly small and therefore all 95 two-face
tests are included in determining whether an LT passed the test.
We plot the MPE vs the two-face errors for each LT. This is shown
for LTs A1, A2, B, and C in Figs. 4(c), 5(c), 6(c), and 7(c), respectively.
We find that the two-face errors are larger than the corresponding
MPE for all 95 two-face tests of LT A1, i.e., 100%, as shown in Table 2.
For LTs A2, B, and C, these percentages are 84.2%, 9.5%, and 100%,
respectively, as shown in Table 2.
Based on the results above, none of the LTs pass the perfor-
mance test based on the network method. Among them, LT A1 is
the worst with 63.2% of its length measurements failing the net-
work test. That is however not surprising because we had inten-
tionally turned off the error model parameters for that LT when
performing for the test. The surprising observation though was
that the other LTs failed the network test. All the three LTs in our
experiment have been used for several years. They were not how-
ever compensated immediately prior to this study. The error mod-
els parameters are likely incorrect and not able to compensate
their current geometric errors. This may be the reason why the
LTs failed the test in this study. We will explore this issue further.
After noticing that all the LTs failed the network test, we were
curious as to whether these LTs would have passed the ASME
B89.4.19 performance tests. We could not, however, run the test
procedures on the LTs because the LTs were already moved/boxed
and setting them up again would have resulted in new error model
parameters. We therefore performed the following simulation. We
numerically constructed the coordinates of the end points for each
reference length and each two-face test described in the ASME
B89.4.19 standard. We then imposed the model parameters (deter-
mined from the network method) of all the LTs into the simulation
to determine the length errors and two-face errors in the presence
of the error model. The result (MPE vs |Error|) plots for the four
cases are shown in Figs. 8–11, summarized in Table 3. Although
LTs A2, B, and C pass the simulated length measurement tests of
the ASME B89.4.19 standard, all the LTs failed the simulated two-
face measurement tests. This indicates that the LTs do indeed
require compensation. According to the experiment result and
the analysis above, we conclude that the proposed method based
on the network method can be used for LT performance evaluation.
5. Discussion and future work
There are several points worth discussing regarding the realiza-
tion of this method.
(1) Uncertainty of the corrected composite lengths
In order to determine the uncertainty in the corrected compos-
ite lengths, we have propagated the LT point coordinate uncer-
tainty (i.e., the one-standard deviation residuals from the
network) to the corrected composite coordinates, and therefore,
the inter-target distances (see Section 2.1 for details). These are
shown in Table 1. While it is not practical, it is theoretically possi-
ble to obtain unrealistically low uncertainties in the corrected
composite lengths by greatly increasing the number of LT posi-
tions. This is because increasing the number of LT positions
 L. Wang et al. / Measurement 165 (2020) 108165 9

0.09 1.8

0.08 Length tests 1.6 Two-face tests

0.07 1.4

0.06 1.2
MPE (mm)

MPE (mm)
0.05 1

0.04 0.8

0.03 0.6

0.02 0.4

0.01 0.2

0 0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
|Error| (mm) |Error| (mm)

(a) (b)
Fig. 8. Comparison of MPEs and simulated errors of (a) length tests, and (b) two-face tests for LT A1 based on ASME B89.4.19 standard.

0.2
0.08 Length tests Two-face tests

0.15
0.06
MPE (mm)

MPE (mm)

0.1
0.04

0.02 0.05

0 0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2
|Error| (mm) |Error| (mm)
(a) (b)
Fig. 9. Comparison of MPEs and simulated errors of (a) length tests, and (b) two-face tests for LT A2 based on ASME B89.4.19 standard.

0.2
Length tests Two-face tests
0.08

0.15
0.06
MPE (mm)

MPE (mm)

0.1
0.04

0.02 0.05

0 0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2
|Error| (mm) |Error| (mm)

(a) (b)
Fig. 10. Comparison of MPEs and simulated errors of (a) length tests, and (b) two-face tests for LT B based on ASME B89.4.19 standard.
10 L. Wang et al. / Measurement 165 (2020) 108165

0.08 0.6
Length tests Two-face tests
0.5
0.06
0.4
MPE (mm)

MPE (mm)
0.04 0.3

0.2
0.02
0.1

0 0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6
|Error| (mm) |Error| (mm)
(a) (b)
Fig. 11. Comparison of MPEs and simulated errors of (a) length tests, and (b) two-face tests for LT C based on ASME B89.4.19 standard.

Table 3
Simulation results of LT performance tests based on ASME B89.4.19.

Test name Length tests Two-face tests

Total number of errors 35 36
LT name A1 A2 B C A1 A2 B C
Number of failed tests because |Error| > MPE 10 0 0 0 36 24 19 36

*See ASME B89.4.19 [1] for a description of test positions.

provides an averaging effect on the composite coordinate. In real-
ity, there are likely always systematic errors that are not removed
by averaging. In the presence of large number of LT positions, we
believe that a realistic estimate for the uncertainty of the corrected
composite lengths cannot be smaller than that realizable using an
LOS interferometer. In our case, we used an estimate of 32 mm
(k = 2) for LOS measurements derived from manufacturer specifica-
tions which may be somewhat conservative. An estimate based on
a ranging test will likely yield more reasonable values for this
uncertainty.
(2) Network robustness
The robustness of the network, i.e., number and location of tar-
gets and LTs, is a key factor in determining the uncertainty in the
reference lengths. We have also performed these experiments with
15 targets and 4 LTs, but the uncertainty of the reference lengths
were larger than for the case of the 19 targets and 5 LTs network.
There is scope for substantial simulation work in this area to deter-
mine the optimal network configuration for performance evalua-
tion purposes.
(3) New test positions
In the procedure we have used, the individual LT positions were
considered as the test positions, while they also contributed to the
determination of the reference lengths. It may be argued that this
is not a fair test, i.e., the test positions are not independent of the
calibration process. It is possible to modify this process by adding
another LT position simply for purposes of performance evaluation.
We leave this task for the future.
(4) Other future work
As future work, we plan on compensating each of our LTs, then
perform the ASME B89.4.19 test procedures, the NISTIR 8016
interim test [4], the ISO 10360-10 [3] test procedures, and the pro-
posed network tests. This is to experimentally validate the network
procedure against the more established and comprehensive
national or international documentary standards.
6. Conclusions
We describe the practical realization of the network method for
performance evaluation of LTs in this paper. In order to reduce the
uncertainty in the reference lengths (which we refer to as the cor-
rected composite lengths), we fit the LT error model as a part of the
network bundle adjustment process. We validate the uncertainties
of corrected composite lengths by comparing selected lengths
against direct LOS interferometry. We then discuss issues pertain-
ing to the use of these reference lengths for performance evalua-
tion of LTs through a case study involving three LTs. The main
conclusions include:
(1) Fitting the LT error model as part of the network bundle
adjustment process in order to lower the uncertainties of
the corrected composite lengths is a novel contribution of
this paper. We determined that uncertainties in the lengths
are smaller than the MPE specifications by at least a factor of
four, thus these corrected composite lengths can be used as
the references for evaluating LT performance.
(2) In the experimental data presented, all LTs failed the pro-
posed performance evaluation test. As mentioned earlier,
this is likely because we had not compensated the LTs prior
to testing. This result is also verified by a simulation based
on the ASME B89.4.19 Standard. That is, for the performance
test of these LTs, the proposed method is consistent with the
standard.
(3) The proposed LT performance evaluation procedure based
on the network method is a feasible test that a user may
quickly perform in the field to determine LT health. The
 L. Wang et al. / Measurement 165 (2020) 108165
network of target and tracker locations in our experiment
did not cover all the required length measurements con-
tained in the ISO 10360-10 or ASME B89.4.19 Standard.
But that can be easily rectified by carefully choosing tracker
and target locations to cover the ASME B89.4.19 or ISO
10360-10 test positions.
(4) We must emphasize that the network method removes the
need for a calibrated and traceable scale bar, however, the
question of how to obtain traceable results is something that
is not covered in this paper. One route to establishing metro-
logical traceability is by calibrating the frequency of the
interferometer used in the LOS measurements. We refer
the topic of metrological traceability of performance tests
using the network method to a future publication.
It is worth noting that a drawback of the proposed LT perfor-
mance evaluation method in this paper is that it requires a larger
working volume than the ASME B89.4.19 Standard. More than a
dozen SMR nests are also necessary during the implementation
of this method. A comprehensive experimental comparison study
of the proposed method in this paper with the related documen-
tary standards is a task for the future.
Disclaimer
Commercial equipment and materials may be identified in
order to adequately specify certain procedures. In no case does
such identification imply recommendation or endorsement by
the National Institute of Standards and Technology, nor does it
imply that the materials or equipment identified are necessarily
the best available for the purpose.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Ling Wang: Investigation, Software, Validation, Formal analysis,
Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Bala Muralikr-
ishnan: Conceptualization, Software, Validation, Formal analysis,
Writing - review & editing. Octavio Icasio Hernandez: Conceptu-
alization, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Writing - review
& editing. Craig Shakarji: Writing - review & editing. Daniel Saw-
yer: Resources, Writing - review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Dr. Meghan Shilling and
Ms. Geraldine S. Cheok for carefully reviewing this paper. The
author Ling Wang would like to thank the support from National
Key Technologies Research & Development Program of China
(2017YFC0804609), the Public Welfare Technology Application
Research Project of Zhejiang Province Science and Technology
Department (LGG18F030010) and Key Research and Development
Program of Zhejiang Province (2019C03114).
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