Abstract: Rotary-laser automatic theodolite(R-LATs) is a distribute large-scale metrology system, taking promising applications in large-scale manufacturing and smart workshop. In the basis of analyzing the work principle of traditional R-LATs, one can point out the drawback that lacking the clock synchronization for all sensors, limiting the application of R-LATs in dynamic measurement activities. To overcome this limitation, the systematic configuration and measurement model for R-LATs with laser pulse based clock synchronization is developed. With help of emitting the synchronous laser pulse taking distinguishable time stamp, the clocks of all sensors are propagated and synchronized via aligning their pulse with same time stamp. Furthermore, the detail encoding and decoding algorithm of synchronization schema are studied, in which a cyclic arithmetic sequence is taken to enhance its robustness and simplicity. At last, the alignment of time series of all sensors of a measurement experiment is investigated to verify the effectiveness of developed R-LATs with clock synchronization based on laser pulse.

Key words: R-LATs, large-scale metrology, dynamic measurement, clock synchronization, clock propagation