IMTC 2005 - Instrumentation and Measurement

Technology Conference
Ottawa, Canada, May 17–19, 2005

A Smart Optical Position Sensor with Genetic Programming Technique

K. Ohtani1 , M. Baba2
1
Faculty of Engineering, Hiroshima Institute of Technology
2-1-1, Miyake, Saeki-ku, Hiroshima, 731-5193, Japan
Phone: +81 82 9216429, Fax: +81 82 9218973, E–mail: ohtani@me.it-hiroshima.ac.jp.
2 Faculty of Engineering, Ibaraki University

4-12-1, Nakanarusawa-cho, Hitachi, Ibaraki, 316-8511, Japan

Phone: +81 294 387099, Fax: +81 294 385272, E–mail: mbaba@mx.ibaraki.ac.jp.

Abstract – An optical measurement system, which uses a light spot or
a slit ray system, often requires an optical position sensor. In such
a system, because the position of a signal light is the most important
and basic information needed, it is necessary for the position sensor
to detect the position accurately under any conditions. We proposed
an intelligent position sensor that can estimate the actual position of
a light spot using a neural network, but the sensor has to go through
a relearning process when the surroundings change. In this paper, we
propose a new method for measuring the position of a light spot in a
real environment utilizing genetic programming. The method doesn’t
require advance training, unlike the method employing a neural net-
work, and it eliminates the influence of background lights. Therefore,
we expect that the application of the proposed sensor will be for on-
line measurement in an actual environment.
Keywords – Position detection, Sensor array, Light spots, Genetic
programming
I. INTRODUCTION
and subtracts only the background light from the sensor’s out-
put. The method is time consuming and memory wasting.
In this paper, we propose a new intelligent method for op-
tical position sensing that is applicable in a real environment.
The proposed method can estimate the actual positions of light
spots accurately by estimating the actual intensity of a signal
light and a background light, respectively, through the use of
genetic programming. In this way, the proposed method can
perform some intelligence functions, such as adaptation of the
detection procedure to the environment being measured online.
The paper is organized as follows: first, the basic scheme of our
position detection approach is explained, and we then present
the simulation results and provide a discussion of some exper-
imental results with a prototype system.
II. POSITION DETECTION BY GENETIC
PROGRAMMING

An optical position sensor is often required to detect the po-
sitions of plural light spots illuminated by light sources such
as laser diodes and light-emitting diodes. Applications that use
such sensors include tracking systems to measure the positions
of robot manipulators [1] and laser rangefinders [2]. In these
applications, the position of a signal light is the most impor-
tant and basic information needed, and accurate measurement
of the position is required in any environment. In a factory or a
laboratory, background lights can be easily excluded from the
surroundings of the object being measured. However, using a
method without noise control in an environment that contains
sunlight or fluorescent light will greatly affect the accuracy
of the position sensor due to interference caused by ambient
light. In this case, the position sensor’s signal processor needs
to eliminate these types of deleterious influences by light.
One of the typical methods for removing background light
is the on-off method [3]. This method is available for an array
type of sensor such as a charge-coupled device (CCD). The
method uses the intensity distribution of a background light
A. Basic scheme
The basic scheme of our method separates a signal light el-
ement and a background light element from the output of a
sensor array by utilizing genetic programming (GP). The sen-
sor array, which consists of a small number of sensor elements
arranged in one dimension or two dimensions, outputs the in-
tensity distribution of an incident light. GP is related to a ge-
netic algorithm (GA), in which computer programs, rather than
function parameters, are optimized. GP often uses tree-based
internal data structures, instead of the list, or array, structures
typical of GAs, to represent the computer programs for adap-
tation. In this study, as shown in Fig. 1, GP estimates the op-
timal coefficients in the following functions (1) and (2), which
express a signal light distribution and a background light dis-
tribution, respectively:
fi (x) = A(x − Pi )2 + Q + N(x) (1)
N(x) = a(x − p)2 + q + bx + c (2)

0-7803-8879-8/05/$20.00 ©2005 IEEE 1166

 Signal element Spot noise element ROOT
Linear noise element
Sensor output

A Q
* P - Noise

+ 0.6 -4.5 / + * + 5.2

1.5 9.5 -1.2 -5.5
5.5
* -9.3 -3.7
5.5 -4.2 + 7.1
-7.5 -0.2 -9.3 -3.7
1.5
Sensor array -3.7 -9.3
-3.7

(a) Intensity of each light element

Fig. 2. Individual tree structure

Pile of the intensity of

each light elements
B. Tree structure of individuals

Fig. 2 shows the tree structure of an individual in the GP, as

an example. The tree structure, which is expressed as equations
(1) and (2), is evolved by a natural selection based on GP. In
this structure, the node of!HROOT !I ,!HP !I,!HNoise !I , and the
four basic operations of arithmetic are non-terminal symbols.
(b) Output distribution of a sensor array The node of!HROOT !I , which has four partial trees, is the root
of a tree. The four partial trees stand for the A, Pi , Q, and N(x)
in equations (1) and (2). Those coefficients are determined by a
Signal element Spot noise element
combination of a terminal symbol of a real number and the four
Linear noise element
basic operations of arithmetic. In this figure, for example, the
parameter A is expressed as the function (5.5 + (−4.2)) ∗ 0.6.

C. Fitness function

Equation (3) gives the root mean squared error-based fitness

(c) Results of GP's estimation
Fig. 1. Outline of the estimation based on GP
From the viewpoint of measurement accuracy and hardware
costs, in the case of using a laser diode and a light-emitting
diode (LED) as a light source, it is effective to approximate
the output distribution of a sensor array with a second-order
polynomial as expressed by equation (1) and detect the incident
position of a spot light [4]. Here, the Pi in equation (1) stands
for the peak positions of signal lights. The i stands for the
number of signal lights.
On the other hand, as expressed by equation (2), we assume
that a background light mainly consists of a spot light element
a(x − p)2 + q and a uniform light element bx + c. In a practical
measurement, the sensor array outputs the composite value of
those light elements, as shown in Fig. 1(a), (b). Therefore, it
is difficult to detect the actual position of a signal light from
the sensor output directly. Here, as shown in Fig. 1(c), the ac-
tual position of a signal light is computed from those estimated
functions.
function:
1
F=
(3)
1
1+ ∑{ fi (x) − s(x)} 2
I
Here, s(x) stands for the output of the sensor array at the posi-
tion of x, and I stands for the number of light signals to be de-
tected. The fitness is determined by the collation between the
output value of the sensor array and the computed value from
the GP’s estimated function in each measurement. The indi-
vidual that produced the greatest fitness is the best individual
in any generation, because the fitness function is normalized.
D. Genetic operation
In this study, we adopt roulette wheel selection, uniform
crossover, and mutation as the genetic operations. The genetic
operations are performed on individuals that are randomly se-
lected from the population. This produces offspring. The fit-
ness of these individuals is then measured, and the probability
of their survival is determined by their fitness. In the muta-
tion operation, a single parental individual is probabilistically

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selected from the population based on fitness. A mutation 14
point is randomly chosen, the subtree rooted at that point is Calculated position
deleted, and a new subtree is grown there using the same ran- 12 from the sensor

Detected postition (pixel)

dom growth process that was used to generate the initial popu- output directly
10
lation.
8
III. COMPUTER SIMULATION Estimated
6
position by GP
A. Procedure 4

2
To verify the applicability of the GP approach to the estima-
tion of plural continuous functions from a discrete datum, we 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
simulated the behavior of a prototype GP on a computer in sev-
Actural position (pixel)
eral situations. In this simulation, we assume that the discrete
datum s(x) is given by the following equations (4), (5), and (6), Fig. 3. Linearity of the peak detection
and the value of s(x) is determined by the amount value of each
equation at x. Here, the discrete datum s(x) is regarded as the

Average error of position estimation (%)

sensor output at the position of x. 0.8

s(x) = ∑ fi (x) (4) 0.6

fi (x) = A (x − Pi )2 + Q + N  (x) (5)

N  (x) = a (x − p )2 + q + b x + c (6) 0.4

In this simulation, the population of one thousand individ- 0.2

uals undergoes generation changes ten thousand times. We
adopt roulette wheel selection, and the selected individuals
0.0
were implemented in a crossover operation with an eighty per-
10.4 13.9 19.9 60.0
cent probability. The mutation probability was five percent.
The coefficients of estimated functions were computed based Signal-to-noise ratio (20*log(x) dB)
on the individual that produced the best fitness. Fig. 4. Peak detection error versus the signal-to-noise ratio

B. Results
Fig. 3 shows the linearity of the position detection. In this
Equations (7) and (8) show the functions that produce the figure, the data expressed in the square shows the results of the
output of the sensor array. The parameters in these functions ordinary method without noise control, and the other shows
are given random values selected from the allowed range on that of the proposed method with GP. Compared with the or-
startup. Equations (9) and (10) show the estimated functions dinary method, our GP method showed a good linearity. The
from the GP corresponding to functions (7) and (8), respec- maximum relative error of the proposed method was 1.0 %.
tively. The estimated positions Pi were nearly equal to the Next, we simulated whether the proposed GP could elim-
given positions Pi . This shows that the GP is effective at re- inate various intensities of spot noise as well as estimate the
moving background light in such an optical sensor array. peak position of signal light spots. The signal-to-noise (S/N)
level was set for up to about 10 dB. Fig. 4 shows the average
error of the peak position estimation for each S/N level. This
fi (x) = −0.46(x − Pi )2 + 91.0 + N  (x) (7) result shows that the GP method can estimate the spot light po-

N (x) = −0.80(x − 10.0) + 30.0 + 0.00x − 0.70
2
(8) sition to within about 10 dB of the S/N level. It is thus not nec-
essary for our method to obtain preliminary knowledge about
fi (x) = −0.44(x − Pi ) + 36.8 + N(x)
2
(9) the environment being measured in advance, which means it
N(x) = −0.56(x − 14.4) + 35.9 − 0.13x − 0.52
2
(10) may adapt to a real environment autonomously.
Finally, we conducted a simulation to determine whether
i 1 2 3 4 5 the proposed GP could adapt to an environment being mea-
Pi 5.00 9.00 11.0 13.0 16.0 sured online. Fig. 5 shows the behavior of the GP versus
Pi 4.97 9.10 11.3 13.3 16.2 measurement time. The background light was changed three

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 Changing points of the surroundings Light source
20 for spot-noise 1.0 mm
Convergence eorror (%)

NN y z
10 Photo-diode array
x

GP
0 ADC
0 300 600 1200
Time in measurement (s)
Fig. 5. Trend of convergence in the changing of surroundings during
measurement
times during the measurement period. The error of the GP es-
timation decreased as the evolution by GP progressed. This
result shows that the proposed method is effective for online
measurement in a real environment. On the other hand, the
method with a neural network [5], which has been proposed
by our group, showed a larger error at the point at which the
background light was changed. Once the neural network has
learned the light condition in the measuring environment, it
remains effective until the light condition changes. However,
the neural network did not adapt to change in an environment
on-line.
IV. EXPERIMENT
A. Setup and procedure
In the practical applicability of this method to the position
detection of light spots, the sensor output does not always coin-
cide with the discrete value computed from a continuous poly-
nomial because of ambient light and electrical noise in a signal
processing circuit. Therefore, to verify the usefulness of the
GP approach in practice, we experimented with detecting the
Lens
1500
Light source for signal
Computer
(GP operation)
Fig. 6. Measurement setup
from the signal light source at different positions, respectively.
In this figure, the horizontal axis shows the pixel number in the
photodiode array, and the vertical axis shows the output voltage
of the sensor element. As shown in this figure, each intensity
distribution of the signal light is warped by the spot noise and
does not fit to an ideal curve. Moreover, the expanses of the
intensity distributions do not coincide with each other in form.
In such a situation, it is difficult to realize precise detection of
the incident positions of light spots. Here, we tried to separate
10 signal elements and one noise element only from the sensor
output using the proposed GP approach. The genetic operation
in this experiment is almost the same as that in the simulation
mentioned above. It took about 300 seconds to compute 10
points using a computer with a Pentium 4 processor 1.6-GHz
CPU and 512 MB of memory.
1.4
Sensor output (V)

position of light spots using a photodiode array (S4114-35Q, 1.2

Hamamatsu Photonics, K.K.) [6] and LEDs, as shown by Fig. 1.0
6. The photodiode array, which received light spots through
0.8
a lens from a light source, consisted of 20 sensor elements.
The interval between sensor elements was 1.0 mm. The sensor 0.6
has a sensitivity of 190 nm to 1000 nm wavelength, and the 0.4
peak wavelength is 800 nm. The light source consisted of 2 0.2
LEDs which have 660 nm wavelength. One LED functioned
0
as a signal light source. This LED was able to move at various
1 4 7 10 13 16 19
intervals by an auto-moving stage. The other LED produced a
light spot for a noise element at a fixed position. The intensity
Position (pixel)
of the signal spot was about 5 times larger than that of the noise Fig. 7. Output distributions of the photo-diode array
spot.
Fig. 7 shows the sensor output in this experiment. The
sensor array observed the 10 intensity distributions projected

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B. Results TABLE I
C OEFFICIENTS IN THE APPROXIMATED FUNCTIONS OF THE LIGHT
INTENSITY DISTRIBUTIONS

Fig. 8 shows the estimation results of the GP approach. Ta- Calculated value GP estimation
ble I shows the detail of the estimated functions of the signal A' P' A P
elements and the noise element. In this table, the column la- peak 1 -0.96 -13.59 -1.10 -12.70
beled!HCalculated value !Ilists the calculated coefficients from peak 2 -0.84 -12.94 -12.40
each light element directly using a fitting with a second-order peak 3 -1.21 -9.13 -9.08
polynomial. The column labeled !H GP estimation !Ilists the peak 4 -1.15 -5.67 -5.70
coefficients estimated through the use of the proposed GP ap- peak 5 -1.45 -4.82 -4.83
proach. The parameters in the table stand for the coefficients in peak 6 -1.46 -1.42 -0.72
the equations (1), (2), (5), and (6). From these results, we see peak 7 -1.41 2.01 2.40
that the estimated coefficients agree well with the calculated peak 8 -1.30 5.50 6.30
values. peak 9 -1.16 9.12 8.90
peak 10 -1.13 12.49 12.60
1.2
a' p' a p
noise -0.14 -2.19 -0.10 -2.47
Sensor output (V)

1.0
0.8
0.6 2.0
0.4 Without noise control
0.2 Error (pixel) 1.0
0.0
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 0.0
Position (pixel)
(a) signal elements -1.0
GP estimation
Sensor output (V)

1.0 -2.0
0.8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

0.6
Peak index

0.4 Fig. 9. Measurement error of the position detection

0.2
0.0
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 V. CONCLUSION
Position (pixel)
(b) noise elements We proposed a new smart optical position sensor that can be
Fig. 8. Separation results of the signal and noise elements from the sensor applied to a real environment. The sensor can detect the actual
outputs positions of light spots accurately through the use of GP. The
GP estimates the approximation functions to the intensity dis-
tribution of both of a signal light element and a noise light ele-
Fig. 9 shows the position detection error of the proposed ment from the sensor array output blended with ambient noise.
approach and the ordinary method without noise control. From In this research, we first verified the validity of the GP ap-
this figure, we see that the GP approach detected all positions proach against the estimation of continuous functions from a
of light spots within about 0.5 % in surroundings with ambient discrete datum using a computer simulation. Next, we carried
light. However, the result of the method without noise control out an experiment with a photodiode array and LEDs in prac-
was relatively worse than that of the GP approach. Considering tice. We found that the proposed method made an appropriate
the circumstances mentioned above, we think that the proposed estimation of the approximation function against both of a sig-
approach can eliminate the spot noise from the sensor output nal light element and a noise element from the output of the
accurately without previous knowledge about the environment sensor array. These results show the practical applicability of
being measured. the proposed GP approach to the robust detection of a light spot
position with an optical sensor array.

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