Patent TW-201534953-A (TW)
Title: Distance measuring apparatus
Inventor: TAKEMURA SHOTA
IPC: G01S17/48
Filed: 2014-10-28
Abstract: The present invention relates to enlargement of a measuring range of a distance measuring apparatus operating in an optical manner. An object is to provide a distance measuring apparatus that allows for easy enlargement of a measuring range without lowering down the resolution power of the distance measuring apparatus. A measuring apparatus according to the present embodiment is an optical triangulation based distance measuring apparatus that comprises: an inspection section that irradiates laser beams to a surface of an inspected object and uses a camera to detect reflection positions of the laser beams; and a distance calculation section that receives position detection data of the laser beams detected by the inspection section and determines the distance between the inspected object and a preset reference position, and is characterized in that the inspection section comprises: a light beam generation section that comprises a plurality of light beam generation optical sections and a light beam lighting control section, the plurality of light beam generation optical sections comprising: a laser source and a collimator that shapes the laser beam irradiated from the laser source into a desired beams size at an irradiation position, the light beam lighting control section generating pulse signals for lighting in time series with a plurality of laser beams as pulse lights and generating an identification signal of the pulse lights; the camera section that is arranged at a direction that is normal to the reference surface to detect the positions of the plurality of laser beams reflected by the inspected object and generates the position detection data; and an optical setting section, which sets, with the light beam generation section and the camera section fixed at predetermined positions, light transmitting positions of the plurality of laser beams and light receiving positions of the reflection lights of the laser beams, the light beam generation section transmitting the plurality of laser beams at predetermined incident angles with respect to the reference surface within a vision space of the camera section according to each of a plurality of distance measurement ranges obtained by dividing a preset measuring distance range and spaced from the reference surface.Further, the distance of a cutting line formed by the intersection of a view angle end line of the camera and the trace line of the laser beam in the vertical direction of the camera is set as a plurality of the distance measuring ranges. The distance calculation section comprises: a plurality of correction tables that provide correspondence of the distance of each distance measuring range of the plurality of distance measuring ranges from the reference surface and the position detection data of the camera, receiving the position detection data and the identification signal transmitted from the camera section, determining the distance from the reference surface according to the correction table corresponding to the distance measuring range, so as to use one camera to measure a plurality of different distance measuring ranges to enlarge the distance measuring range.