Distance measuring apparatus, distance measuring method, and control program

A distance measuring method performed in a distance measuring apparatus including a multi laser beam emitting unit, an image acquiring unit, and a distance calculating unit, the multi laser beam emitting unit irradiating a surface of a measurement target object with a plurality of elliptical laser beams provided in line in a minor axis direction, the image acquiring unit receiving reflected lights of the laser beams and acquiring an image of a bright and dark pattern of the reflected lights of the laser beams formed on an image acquiring face, the distance calculating unit calculating a distance to the measurement target object based on the bright and dark pattern of the reflected lights on the image acquiring face, the method comprising:

• causing the distance measuring apparatus to reciprocally move irradiating positions of the laser beams all together along a major axis of the laser beams so that an envelope of quantity of the reflected lights of the laser beams formed on the image acquiring face becomes close to a Gaussian distribution;
• causing the distance measuring apparatus to acquire the image of the bright and dark pattern of the reflected lights of the laser beams;
• and
• causing the distance measuring apparatus to calculate the distance to the measurement target object based on the bright and dark pattern of the reflected lights.

A computer program product having a non-transitory computer readable medium including programmed instructions for controlling a distance measuring apparatus including a multi laser beam emitting unit, an image acquiring unit, and a distance calculating unit, the multi laser beam emitting unit irradiating a surface of a measurement target object with a plurality of elliptical laser beams provided in line in a minor axis direction, the image acquiring unit receiving reflected lights of the laser beams and acquiring an image of a bright and dark pattern of the reflected lights of the laser beams formed on an image acquiring face, the distance calculating unit calculating a distance to the measurement target object based on the bright and dark pattern of the reflected lights on the image acquiring face, wherein the instructions, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to perform:

• reciprocally moving irradiating positions of the laser beams all together along a major axis of the laser beams so that an envelope of quantity of the reflected lights of the laser beams formed on the image acquiring face becomes close to a Gaussian distribution;
• acquiring the image of the bright and dark pattern of the reflected lights of the laser beams;
• and
• calculating the distance to the measurement target object based on the bright and dark pattern of the reflected lights.