More Degrees of Freedom for Precision Optics
AMA Innovation Award 2014 for Tilted Wave Interferometer
Nuremberg/Berlin, June 2014—The AMA Association for Sensors and Measurement (AMA) presented the winner of the AMA Innovation Award 2014 at the SENSOR+TEST on the 3rd of June in Nuremberg. The AMA Innovation Award 2014 was granted for the Tilted Wave Interferometer (TWI) used to quickly and flexibly measure aspheric and free-form surfaces. The device is a joint development of Goran Baer, Christof Pruss, and Johannes Schindler (Institute for Technical Optics, University of Stuttgart) as well as of Jens Siepmann and Dr. Markus Lotz (Mahr GmbH, Jena).
The prize-winning submission swayed the jury thanks to its combination of flexibility, precision, and short measurement periods, without the need to make compensating optics for different test pieces. “The winning process is characterized by its depth of development and clearly apparent market relevance. The TWI, developed at the Stuttgart University and at Mahr GmbH, is designed for aspheric and non-rotational symmetry free-form surfaces. It offers a broad lateral resolution, short measurement periods – and should be of interest for applications in industries with modern optics production,” stated jury chair Andreas Schütze, University of Saarland, explaining the decision of the jury.
Christof Pruss and the development team will be pleased to receive the 10.000-euro award, which goes directly to the team members themselves. They will be presenting their Tilted Wave Interferometer at the SENSOR+TEST 2014 in Hall 12, at Stand 12/492.
The Association has been presenting the AMA Innovation Award for 14 years now and publishes a brochure providing an overview of the contenders and their submitted projects every year – this year the “AMA Innovation Award 2014 – the Contenders.” Thirty-five projects were submitted this year from Germany and abroad. Three of them were nominated as outstanding:
“EasyPrecision” – high-precision measurement of optical elements
Matthias Eichmann, Dr. Ufuk Ceyhan, David Hilbig
(ePholution GmbH, Bremen; SENSOR+TEST Halle 12, Stand 12/377)
“InKa” interaction cable
Dr.-Ing. Jens Teichert, Flavius Hirceaga
(Teichert Systemtechnik GmbH, Lilienthal; SENSOR+TEST Halle 12, Stand 12/375)
Ultra-precision positioning sensor with picometer resolution & 10-MHz bandwidth
Dr. Martin Zech, Prof. Dr. Khaled Karrai, Pierre-Francois Braun, Klaus Thurner, Alexander Watanabe
(attocube systems AG, Munich; SENSOR+TEST Halle 12, Stand 12/450)
and Björn Habrich, Jens Neumann, Holger Krüger, Gert Franke
(N-Hands GmbH & Co. KG, Idstein)
The competition for the AMA Innovation Award 2015 will start in October 2014. Individuals as well as developer teams from enterprises or institutes from all over the world can submit their projects.
