US 6,288,774 B1Granted

Distance measuring device

AssigneeFujitsu Limited

InventorsMasayuki Takubo, Morito Shiohara

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Abstract

A distance measuring device using markers and capable of accurately measuring distance irrespective of the distance to an object. An optical system converges light from markers affixed to an object on the light receiving surface of a light receiving section. The light receiving section generates an image signal by photoelectric conversion and outputs the generated signal. First marker image acquiring means acquires images of markers, and second marker image acquiring means also acquires images of markers. Selecting means selects the output of the first marker image acquiring means if the distance to the object is short, and selects the images acquired by the second marker image acquiring means if the distance to the object is large. Based on the distance between the marker images selected by the selecting means, computing means computes the distance to the object by trigonometry.

Claims4

Dependent claims

A distance measuring device for measuring a distance to an object having a plurality of markers by obtaining a distance between images of the markers projected on a light receiving section thereof, comprising:

first marker image acquiring means for acquiring images of a pair of markers separated at a first distance from each other, from among images of the markers projected on the light receiving section;
second marker image acquiring means for acquiring images of another pair of markers separated at a second distance from each other, from among the images of the markers projected on the light receiving section;
selecting means for selecting the marker images acquired by said first marker image acquiring means or the marker images acquired by said second marker image acquiring means in accordance with a predetermined condition;
and
computing means for computing a distance to the object based on the marker images selected by said selecting means.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.