Patent ID: 8085387

Claim:
An optical instrument for obtaining distance and image information of an object, comprising: a lens arrangement for sighting the object; a camera aligned with the optical axis of the lens arrangement for acquiring an image of at least part of the object; a distance measuring unit for measuring a distance to the object along a measurement axis of the distance measuring unit parallel to the optical axis of the lens arrangement; a positioning unit for adjusting the optical axis of the lens arrangement relative to at least one reference axis; and a control unit comprising: a first control element adapted to define in the image an area to be scanned, to obtain a plurality of measurement pixels of the object within the area and to convert, using a conversion algorithm, the plurality of measurement pixels into an approximation of coordinates of a plurality of positions to be measured assuming a default distance between the plurality of positions and the optical instrument, and a second control element adapted to instruct the positioning unit to adjust the optical axis of the lens arrangement sequentially onto the plurality of positions to be measured and to instruct the distance measuring unit to measure the distances to the plurality of positions, wherein the first control element is further adapted to recalculate, using the conversion algorithm, the coordinates of the plurality of positions based on the measured distances.