Automatic distance measuring device
AssigneeMinolta Camera Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsMotonobu Matsuda, Yoshihiro Tanaka
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A distance measuring device has a light emitter, a light receiver including a plurality of photoresponsive elements for sensing the pulsating light beam emitted by the light emitter and subsequently reflected from a target object relative to which the distance from the device is to be measured, and a signal processing circuit. The signal processing circuit includes a logic circuit so designed as to determine the significance of an output signal from one of a number of light measuring circuits connected to the respective photoresponsive elements in relation to output signals from the other of the light measuring circuits.
Claims10
A distance measuring device which comprises:
- means for directing a beam of light towards a target object;
- means for receiving the beam of light reflected by the target object, said receiving means having a plurality of at least three light sensing portions, the optical axes of which intersect the path of travel of said beam of light in different ranges of distance from said directing means;
- means responsive to said receiving means for signaling whether conditions of the respective light sensing portions are light sensing or non-light sensing;
- and
- logic circuit means for logically processing the outputs from said signaling means for each of all relationships of any of said sensing portion's condition with that of all other sensing portions' conditions and generating an output indicating a preselected target object distance range for each of such relationships.
A distance measuring device which comprises:
- means for directing a beam of light towards a target object;
- means for receiving the beam of light reflected by the target object, said receiving means having a plurality of 4 light sensing portions, the optical axes of which intersect the path of travel of said beam of light in different ranges of distance from said directing means;
- means responsive to said receiving means for signaling whether conditions of the respective light sensing portions are light sensing or non-light sensing;
- and
- logic circuit means for logically processing the outputs from said signaling means for each of eight relationships of any of said sensing portion's condition with that of all other sensing portions' conditions, said eight relationships including a first group of relationships where light sensing portions, the optical axes of which intersect the path of travel of the beam of light in non-neighboring ranges of distance, are in the light receiving condition, and generating an output indicating a preselected target object distance range for each of such relationships.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.