Freeform surface measurement as an example for the advantages of the use of databases in measurement setups

In the scientific world, the advantages from different fields are often combined to create a new more advanced system or device. In this work, we will present a new measurement technique for freeform surface measurement and the usage of a database to combine different programming languages in one measurement system. To measure a surface, many different measurement techniques are available. However, every measurement technique has its limits and most of them are designed to measure a certain type of surface. By combining the proven abilities of experimental ray tracing with the know methods of deflectometry, we have developed a new measurement setup to measure unknown freeform surfaces. For the evaluation of the measured data, the numeric tools of the open source programming language “python” are used. In contrast to that, the equipment used in the measurement setup is controlled by “C”. Using a database, the advantages of both programming languages are combined. This opens up even more options to process the measurement data which will be shown in this work.