CONFOCAL OPTICAL PROTRACTOR

A confocal optical protractor for simultaneously measuring roll angle, pitch angle and yaw angle of an element that includes a tunable laser source generating a laser beam and an SPPR device responsive to the laser beam. The protractor also includes a beam splitter receiving and splitting an output beam from the SPPR device, and a lens being responsive to and projecting the split beam onto the element and being responsive to a reflected beam from the element. The protractor further includes a measurement detector responsive to the reflected beam from the element, where the reflected beam is imaged by the lens onto the measurement detector, and a processor receiving and processing image data from the measurement detector and generating the pitch, yaw and roll angles from the data, where the image data includes an orientation of an vortex intensity pattern in the split beam.