Automatic Vision-Based Optical Fiber Alignment Using Multirate Technique

Automatic optical fiber alignment is the key to reducing the cost of the packaging process for the manufacturing of fiber-optic devices. This paper develops a vision-based active optical fiber alignment technique for coarse positioning using a piezoactuated moving platform that is controlled to reduce the alignment difference to within a certain degree. To overcome the adverse effect of the delay time between the motion control system and the vision system, the methodology based on the multirate control scheme is presented. Experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.