OPTICAL DISTANCE MEASURING DEVICE

    公开(公告)号:US20220113408A1

    公开(公告)日:2022-04-14

    申请号:US17645016

    申请日:2021-12-17

    Abstract: An optical distance measuring device using light includes a light-emitting part in which a first and second light-emitting elements that have a light-emitting region, in which a length in a first direction is longer than that in a second direction intersecting the first direction, are separated from each other in the second direction; two projection lenses that are respectively provided to correspond to the first and second light-emitting elements, and are separated from each other in the second direction and arranged at positions overlapping each other in the first direction; a scanner that scans a measurement region with emitted beams emitted from the light-emitting part and have passed through the projection lenses; a light receiving part that receives reflected light of the emitted beams emitted from the light-emitting part; and a measurement section measuring a distance to an object according to a time period from light emission to light reception.

    LIGHT RANGE FINDING APPARATUS
    2.
    发明申请

    公开(公告)号:US20210373155A1

    公开(公告)日:2021-12-02

    申请号:US17401012

    申请日:2021-08-12

    Abstract: A light range finding apparatus is provided with a light emitting optical system that projects a pattern light having an irradiation region and a non-irradiation region; a light receiving sensor including an arrayed light receiving element; a light receiving optical system that receives a reflected light of the pattern light and enlarges a portion of the reflected light corresponding to the irradiation region to be larger than a single light receiving element and causes the enlarged reflected light to be incident on the light receiving sensor; a distance measurement unit that measures a distance to the object based on an output of the light receiving sensor; and a positional alignment section that performs, based on the output of the light receiving sensor, a positional alignment of at least a part of the light emitting optical system and the light receiving optical system.

    TIME-OF-FLIGHT DISTANCE MEASUREMENT DEVICE
    3.
    发明申请

    公开(公告)号:US20190179017A1

    公开(公告)日:2019-06-13

    申请号:US16321952

    申请日:2017-07-27

    Inventor: Toshiaki NAGAI

    Abstract: A digital signal processing circuit measures a distance according to a plurality of modulation frequencies including a first modulation frequency and a second modulation frequency lower than the first modulation frequency. The digital signal processing circuit is configured such that, when measuring the distance at the first modulation frequency, a storage capacitance of a light receiving element 6 stores or discharges electric charges according to the timing when the polarity of a phase is controlled by a light emission control unit at each transmission of a sub sequence and the distance is measured according to the electric charges stored in the storage capacitance. The digital signal processing circuit corrects the distance measurement result based on the measurement result at the first modulation frequency and the measurement result at the second modulation frequency.

    OPTICAL DISTANCE MEASUREMENT APPARATUS

    公开(公告)号:US20210396876A1

    公开(公告)日:2021-12-23

    申请号:US17467356

    申请日:2021-09-06

    Inventor: Toshiaki NAGAI

    Abstract: An optical distance measurement apparatus includes a light source unit configured to emit pulsed light in units of the number of times determined in advance, a light receiving unit including a light receiving element which receives pulsed light reflected from a first object and configured to output a response signal in accordance with received light intensity of the pulsed light, and a control unit configured to generate a histogram by accumulating and recording the response signal output from the light receiving unit, corresponding to the number of times, in a time bin in accordance with time of flight of the pulsed light and calculate a distance to the object on the basis of the histogram. The control unit changes a light emission interval of the pulsed light by the light source unit within a unit of the number of times.

    TIME-OF-FLIGHT DISTANCE MEASURING DEVICE AND METHOD FOR DETECTING MULTIPATH ERROR

    公开(公告)号:US20190056482A1

    公开(公告)日:2019-02-21

    申请号:US16075847

    申请日:2016-02-08

    Abstract: The present disclosure relates to a time-of-flight distance measuring device. The light source includes a plurality of emitting portions, each of which illuminates a respective one of the sub-regions. The light receiver includes a plurality of receiving portions corresponding to respective ones of the emitting portions. The first controller controls (i) a first emitting portion to emit the emitted light including an Nth-order harmonic component of a fundamental frequency and (ii) a second emitting portion to emit the emitted light including an Mth-order harmonic component. The second controller controls a particular receiving portion corresponding to the first emitting portion to be sensible to the Nth-order Mth-order harmonic components. The multipath detector detects occurrence of the multipath error when the particular receiving portion senses both the Nth-order and Mth-order components.

    TIME-OF-FLIGHT DISTANCE MEASURING DEVICE

    公开(公告)号:US20170315238A1

    公开(公告)日:2017-11-02

    申请号:US15525311

    申请日:2015-11-12

    Inventor: Toshiaki NAGAI

    Abstract: A time-of-flight distance measuring device divides a base exposure period into a plurality of sub exposure periods and holds without resetting an electric charge stored in the sub exposure period for a one round period which is one round of the plurality of sub exposure periods. The distance measurement value of short time exposure is acquired during the one round period and the distance measurement value of long time exposure is acquired during a plurality of the one round periods. Both of the distance measurement value of the long time exposure and the distance measurement value of the short time exposure can be acquired from the same pixel. With this, a dynamic range is expanded without being restricted by a receiving state of reflected light, optical design of received light, and an arrangement of pixels.

    TIME-OF-FLIGHT DISTANCE MEASUREMENT DEVICE
    7.
    发明申请

    公开(公告)号:US20170227643A1

    公开(公告)日:2017-08-10

    申请号:US15502541

    申请日:2015-08-26

    Inventor: Toshiaki NAGAI

    CPC classification number: G01S17/36 G01S7/4914 G01S7/4915 G01S7/493 G01S7/497

    Abstract: In a time-of-flight distance measurement device, a light receiving device is driven by a sequence having a matrix of a phase number n, a value sampled on the basis of the n rank matrix with respect to the phase number n is linearly calculated, and a waveform equivalent to the waveform sampled in a 1/n step is detected. A linear operation is performed on a sampled value based on the matrix with the rank n with respect to the phase number n, thereby being capable of restoring the waveform equivalent to the waveform sampled in the 1/n steps, and determining whether the shape of the light emission waveform is normal, or not. As a result, the shape of the light emission waveform can be monitored without interrupting a distance measurement.

    SYSTEM FOR MONITORING SURROUNDINGS OF VEHICLE

    公开(公告)号:US20210382177A1

    公开(公告)日:2021-12-09

    申请号:US17406588

    申请日:2021-08-19

    Abstract: In a system for monitoring surroundings of a vehicle, an optical ranging device including a light emitting unit, a light receiving unit configured to receive reflected light from a measurement region, toward which the illumination light from the light emitting unit is projected, and a measurement unit configured to measure a distance to an object within the measurement region using a signal corresponding to a state of the reflected light, output from the light receiving unit. A shape of the measurement region as the illumination light is projected along a horizontal direction onto a cylindrical plane along a vertical direction, surrounding the optical ranging device, is a narrow-at-end shape. The optical ranging device and another optical ranging device are arranged on the vehicle such that the illumination light from the optical ranging device has a larger depression angle than illumination light from the other optical ranging device.

    DISTANCE MEASURING APPARATUS, RECOGNIZING APPARATUS, AND DISTANCE MEASURING METHOD

    公开(公告)号:US20190195991A1

    公开(公告)日:2019-06-27

    申请号:US16227363

    申请日:2018-12-20

    CPC classification number: G01S7/4808 G01S7/4815 G01S17/42 G01S17/936

    Abstract: In a distance measuring apparatus, an irradiating unit irradiates a measurement region with a pattern light comprised of first and second luminous patterns. The second luminous pattern has a relatively low intensity lower than the intensity of the first luminous pattern. A light receiving sensor receives, for each pixel, a return light component based on reflection of the pattern light by a target object. A measurement controller determines whether an intensity of each return light component received by the corresponding pixel satisfies a measurement condition, and obtains, as effective distance information, at least one distance value of at least one pixel of the light receiving sensor when it is determined that the intensity of the return light component received by the at least one pixel satisfies the measurement condition.

    TIME-OF-FLIGHT DISTANCE MEASUREMENT DEVICE AND METHOD FOR SAME

    公开(公告)号:US20170115393A1

    公开(公告)日:2017-04-27

    申请号:US15318706

    申请日:2015-11-03

    CPC classification number: G01S17/10 G01S7/4861 G01S7/4865 G01S7/4868

    Abstract: A light emitting element emits a modulated light modulated in a pattern having a repetitive period toward a space. A driving unit drives the light emitting element. A light receiving element distributes charges corresponding to an incident light containing a reflected light obtained by reflecting the modulated light on an object to storage capacitors and stores the distributed charges. A control unit controls an exposure of the light receiving element. A signal processing unit measures a distance to the object by using a value sampled by the light receiving element. The control unit controls the exposure of the light receiving element to give a sensitivity to at least one high-order harmonic. The signal processing unit linearly combines a component of a fundamental wave with a component of the at least one high-order harmonic to measure the distance to the object.

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