Force Visualization System Integrating Moiré Fringe with Fiber Optic Plates to Eliminate Parallax Error

Abstract A mechanism for visualizing the magnitude of force is proposed. The mechanism displays the magnitude of the force to be measured as a stripe pattern or character of the principle of Moiré fringe. The structure of the visualization mechanism is extremely simple. The mechanism does not require strain gauges, amplifiers, cables, or other electrical elements. Although errors owing to hysteresis and parallax caused by structural issues have occurred in visualization devices developed to date, these problems have been resolved using a fiber optic plate and diffuse reflection. A method for acquiring the magnitude of force by photographing the mechanism with a camera and performing image processing to obtain a numerical value is also proposed. The performance of the improved force visualization mechanism was verified experimentally. The verification demonstrated that the display of characters corresponding to the magnitude of the force and the acquisition of force information from images were possible. Moreover, hysteresis did not occur, and errors caused by parallax were eliminated.