Patent ID: 8681323

Claim:
A laser scanning sensor comprising: a housing in which an opening portion is formed; a cover that is arranged so as to cover the opening portion and that allows laser light to pass therethrough; a laser range finder that is arranged inside the housing, includes a laser light emitting portion for emitting laser light to outside of the housing through the cover and a laser light receiving portion for receiving laser light and outputting a signal according an amount of the received laser light, and performs measurement by acquiring distance information to each object through measurement of a period of time taken for reflected light caused by the laser light emitted by the laser light emitting portion being reflected by each object to return, and acquiring corresponding received light level information of the reflected light reflected by each object; a scanning mechanism portion that adjusts the laser range finder to change a measurement direction of the laser range finder; an information acquisition portion that forms a detection area, as a result of acquisition of the distance information and the received light level information by the laser range finder at each measurement direction, and that sequentially acquires the distance information and the received light level information for each measurement direction in the detection area; a storage portion that stores, for each measurement direction, the distance information that corresponds to a maximum detectable distance of the distance information for that measurement direction acquired by the information acquisition portion; a determination portion that determines whether a state in which measurement directions whose distance information has a value less than a predetermined distance and whose received light level is greater than or equal to a predetermined threshold occupy a predetermined proportion or more of all measurement directions has continued for at least a predetermined period of time; and an alert output control portion that outputs an alert signal according to a result of the determination performed by the determination portion, wherein the predetermined threshold to be compared with the received light level of each measurement direction in the determination portion is changed based on the distance information stored for each measurement direction in the storage portion.