Patent ID: 8372007

Claim:
A shape detection device, comprising: a wave-transmission module for simultaneously transmitting ultrasonic waves from a plurality of wave-transmission transducers to a target object; a wave-reception module for receiving with a plurality of wave-reception transducers front-surface reflected waves of the ultrasonic wave transmitted from the wave-transmission module, reflected on a front surface of the target object; an incoming direction detecting module for detecting an incoming direction of one of the front-surface reflected waves to each of a plurality of transducer groups using a time difference between timings at which two wave-reception transducers constituting each transducer group receive one of the front-surface reflected waves, each transducer group being constituted with two wave-reception transducers adjacent to each other among the plurality of wave-reception transducers; a propagation time detecting module for detecting a propagation time of one of the front-surface reflected waves that reaches each transducer group using a received wave signal of the front-surface reflected wave of at least one of the two wave-reception transducers constituting each transducer group; a front-surface reflection point detecting module for detecting a plurality of reflection points of the ultrasonic waves on the front surface of the target object based on the incoming direction and the propagation time of the front-surface reflected wave detected for each transducer group by using the incoming direction detecting module and the propagation time detecting module, respectively; and a shape deriving module for deriving a shape of the front surface of the target object using the plurality of the reflection points on the front surface of the target object detected by the front-surface reflection point detecting module for the plurality of the transducer groups.