A position measuring system has been developed for robot calibration. The system is essentially a mechatronic gyrator which continuously rotates to take sighting shots of infrared emitters and obtain the azimuth and elevation angles. This occurs whenever the gyrator is in a position to let the beam from one of the emitters pass through one of the slots in the gyrator to a photo sensor. The relative positions between the gyrator and the emitters can then be determined by triangulation. The gyrator is a compact, single station device which can perform 6 DOF measurement of the robot end effector by using a element target.