This paper presents a 3D noncontacting sensor system designed to measure the position and orientation of a robot end effector. This measurement system includes two parts: a tridimensional object including four spheres placed along the axes of a tetrahedron and a set of three orthogonally pointed cameras. The purpose is to design a measurement system characterized by easy relationships in order to satisfy real-time constraints. The system has been used in two experiments: first, to calibrate a parallel robot and validate the geometrical control performance, then as an exteroceptive sensor in an assembly task. The system computes position and orientation of the tetrahedron in 100 ms time. The position and orientation accuracy are, respectively, 0.6 mm and 0.2 deg in a workspace, being a cube with 0.3 m sides.