Experimental Characterization of the Twin-Eye Laser Mouse Sensor

Abstract

This paper proposes the experimental characterization of a laser mouse sensor used in some optical mouse devices. The sensor characterized is called twin-eye laser mouse sensor and uses the Doppler effect to measure displacement as an alternative to optical flow-based mouse sensors. The experimental characterization showed similar measurement performances to optical flow sensors except in the sensitivity to height changes and when measuring nonlinear displacements, where the twin-eye sensor offered better performance. The measurement principle of this optical sensor can be applied to the development of alternative inexpensive applications that require planar displacement measurement and poor sensitivity to<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>z</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math>-axis changes such as mobile robotics.