Patent ID: 6845067

Claim:
An optical pickup position control method that is used in an optical disk device that records and/or plays back information by shining an optical spot from an optical pickup onto an optical disk, and that positions the relative position of the optical disk and the optical pickup in a position that gives the optimum value of a jitter value of a detection signal obtained by detecting the reflected light of the optical spot, the method comprising: (a) a jitter value acquisition procedure that performs multiple feed operations within the adjustment range of the relative position and obtains the jitter value at each feed position, (b) an edge position setting procedure that, based on the feed positions and jitter values obtained by the jitter value acquisition procedure, sets as the edge positions relative positions that will be greater than a preset prescribed jitter threshold value, (c) an optimum position computation procedure that computes the optimum position that will give the optimum value of the jitter value, based on the edge positions set by this edge position setting procedure, (d) an optimum position adjustment procedure that adjusts the relative position of the optical disk and the optical pickup to the optimum position computed by this optimum position computation procedure, (e) wherein the edge position procedure sets the edge positions on the condition that there are at least two relative positions that will give a jitter value that exceeds the jitter threshold value, and, (f) wherein the acquisition of the jitter value at each feed position in the jitter value acquisition procedure is achieved by rotating the optical disk at a prescribed speed, taking in multiple jitter values along the inside circumference of the optical disk, and taking the average of the obtained multiple jitter values excluding the maximum value.