Fuji Electric Co., Ltd.

Sony Corporation

Sankyo Company, Limited

Fuji Electric Device Technology Co., Ltd.

Fuji Electric Corporate Research & Development Co., Ltd.

Akio Izumi

Osamu Sugiyama

Hideo Shimizu

Toshio Yamamoto

Takehide Hirabayashi

Nobuo Hirata

Hajime FuKamura

Hideshi Abe

Hideo Kanbe

Masanori Ohashi

Atsushi Asai

Takahisa Kusaka

Takashi Nishibe

Atsushi Kobayashi

Hideyuki Tanaka

Maki Sato

Tadakuni Narabu

Toshio Sato

Yasuhito Maki

Toshiyuki Nakazawa

Tomio Ishigami

Takashi Matsui

Shinji Nakagawa

Katsuyuki Saito

Taichi Tanigawa

Sachiaki Komatsu

Nobuo Hashimoto

Takaji Otsu

Keijiro Nakamura

Yasuhiko Naito

Kouji Shiino

Shozo Wada

Takeshi Tamugi

A range finder includes a package, a semiconductor chip, an optical casing, a lens holder, a first lens, and a second lens. The first and second lenses are attached to the lens holder. The lens holder is formed of a material having a thermal expansion coefficient equal or close to that of the semiconductor chip. The range finder is constructed such that a distance between the two lenses and a distance between two light detecting sections on the semiconductor chip do not change significantly relative to each other due to the thermal expansion or contraction.

Range finder

An auto-focusing device and an electronic image pickup apparatus facilitates realizing a high focusing accuracy and a quick focusing operation simultaneously using an inexpensive plastic lens mount. The auto-focusing device according includes a means for correcting the conversion reference, if necessary, for converting the object distance measured by the open-control range finding means to a focusing position of the focusing lens based on the conversion reference and for moving the focusing lens to the converted focusing position. The electronic image pickup apparatus includes the auto-focusing device.

Automatic focusing device and the electronic image pickup apparatus using the same

A semiconductor device module is provided that prevents adhesion defects from causing in bonding a semiconductor sensor chip to a sensor stage with an adhesive and improving the reliability thereof. The semiconductor device module includes a sensor stage and a semiconductor optical sensor chip mounted on the sensor stage. The sensor stage includes a U-groove formed in an upper central surface portion of a bottom wall thereof. The sensor chip is bonded to the sensor stage with a thermosetting and UV-curing adhesive coated in the U-groove. The U-groove, includes an island-shaped flat pedestal located at a central bottom portion of the U-groove for mounting the sensor chip thereon. Pins are preferably disposed on both sides of the pedestal to hold the sensor chip horizontally, and the side walls of the U-grooveare preferably slanted such that the adhesive coated in the U-groove is prevented from splashing to the outside.

Semiconductor device module

A semiconductor device in which accuracy in mounting and positioning a semiconductor chip onto a package is improved without being affected by operation of a mounting unit such as a die bonder. The semiconductor device includes a semiconductor chip disposed on a die pad section of the package using guide projections and spring projections provided around the die pad section. The semiconductor chip is die bonded while being aligned with reference to the guide projections.

Semiconductor device

A semiconductor optical sensing apparatus is formed of a casing made of an electrically insulative material and having at least one opening at a bottom portion; a wiring device extending from an inside to an outside of the casing; a semiconductor optical sensor chip bonded to the bottom portion of the casing; and a connecting device for connecting a terminal of the sensor chip and the wiring device. A transparent filler is filled in a space inside the casing to cover the sensor chip, wherein the opening absorbs a volume change of the transparent filler caused by expansion or contraction thereof. A focusing device is connected to the casing and located at a position to focus an image on the sensor chip. The focusing device and casing are made of the same material or materials having substantially same thermal expansion coefficients. The semiconductor apparatus has a simple structure less affected by temperature variations and facilitates preventing deterioration and variation of optical characteristics, elongating life and improving reliability of the apparatus.

Semiconductor optical sensing apparatus with reliable focusing means and casing structure

A range finder includes an improved module structure, that facilitates injecting a transparent filler uniformly into the entire light guide spaces neither leaving any unfilled region nor impairing the characteristics thereof. A channel of flow (or U-groove) is formed across a partition wall, connecting light guide spaces arranged side by side. This feature allows smooth flow of transparent filler into the range finder module without an unfilled region and consequently no overflow of the transparent filler onto outer wall of the plastic module and onto terminal portion of the lead frame. Another feature of this invention is the presence of shield walls along the channel of flow protruding from the side walls of the channel of flow in an inter-digitated fashion, to prevent the stray light from one light guide space entering the other light guide space through the channel of flow.

Range finder structure allowing easier filling of the transparent filler

The range finder measures the distance to the object based on the principle of triangulation, and includes a pair of lenses; a lens supporting frame; a CCD supporting plate; CCD packages supported by the plate; and temperature sensors. One sensor is positioned on the frame between the lenses, and the other is positioned on the plate between the CCD packages. Each CCD package includes a CCD chip located at a focal plane of the lens, a casing and a transparent plate. The lenses, frame, casing and transparent plates are made of the same plastic material so that the thermal expansion of the entire range finder caused by the temperature change may not affect to the distance measurement. Bonding ribs connected to the transparent plate are located near an image ray hole to face each other and on the line perpendicular to the optical axis of the CCD chip and the plane containing the optical axes of the CCD chips. Therefore, the thermal deformation of the transparent plate in the base line direction of the range finder may not affect significantly. The range finder of the invention can reduce the distance measurement error caused by nonuniform thermal deformations of the parts.

Thermal deformation compensating range finder

A semiconductor optical sensing device includes an insulating casing containing a semiconductor optical sensor chip fixed in the bottom thereof. Transparent silicone gel fills the interior of the casing and covers the sensor chip. A transparent plate covers both the sensor chip and the silicone gel. Holes in the casing allow expansion and contraction of the silicone gel without disturbing the optical properties of the sensor chip, and without permitting the formation of bubbles in the silicone gel.

Semiconductor optical sensing device package

A CCD type solid state imaging device including a plurality of vertically arranged light receiving elements, a plurality of vertical charge transfer electrodes associated with the light receiving elements and transfer channels through which signal electrical charges stored in the light receiving elements are readout and transferred in the charge transfer direction by the transfer electrodes. The present invention features that unlike the conventional CCD type solid state imaging device, the boundary line between at least a part of the vertical charge transfer electrodes and a part of the vertical charge transfer electrodes adjacent thereto is held aslant with respect to the transfer channels so that the vertical transfer efficiency of the device is increased without incurring a reduction in the amount of signal charges being handled and the readout of the signal charges stored in the light receiving elements to the transfer channels is performed more smoothly than the conventional device.

CCD type solid state imaging device

A distance-measuring apparatus is formed of a photographic device formed of a pair of image-forming lenses and photosensor arrays for taking images of an object through the image-forming lenses, and a calculating device electrically connected to the photosensor arrays for calculating a distance to an object to be measured by two images of the object taken by the photographic device based on a triangulation principle. The calculating device calculates the distance to the object by an amount of shift determined based on an inter-optical-axis distance of the pair of image-forming lenses and photographed images of a reference object having a pattern of a periodic structure repeated at an interval same as the inter-optical-axis distance; a difference in offsets of image-forming positions on the photosensor arrays caused by a medium located between the apparatus and the measured object, with the difference being detected based on the amount of the shift; and an amount of shift detected when the distance to the measured object is measured.

Distance-measuring apparatus

A measuring instrument is formed of an image pickup device having a pair of image-forming lenses and photosensor arrays; and an arithmetic device using two images of a measured object photographed by the image pickup device to calculate the distance to the object based on the principle of triangulation. The image-forming lenses, a first holding member for the image-forming lenses and a second holding member for the photosensor arrays are formed of the same plastic material without hygroscopicity. Changes in size of the measuring instrument by ambient temperature and humidity are prevented to increase distant measurement accuracy.

Distance measuring instrument

In a distance detection method, a pair of image data representing a pattern of images is obtained by using a pair of image sensors for receiving optical images. Then, a detection target extracted from each of the image data is captured while sequentially shifting positions of divisions in respective groups of divisions from window part data corresponding to a visual field to provide combinations, each having a pair of divisions, and a correlation value is calculated between each pair of the divisions. Also, a precision at a best correlation point as an indicator of reliability of the best correlation is obtained based on a changing condition of the correlation value near a shift value where the best correlation value has been calculated. Finally, a distance to the detection target is obtained by determining that the detection target is present in the visual field seen through the window corresponding to the window part data only when the precision exceeds a predetermined level.

Distance detection method using images

A distance measuring apparatus of the invention includes an arithmetic operation device which uses the degree of shift detected when the distance to a reference object is measured and a known distance to the reference object, to determine the difference between the offsets of image-forming positions on optical sensor arrays caused by a windshield present between a measuring object and the optical sensor arrays. The arithmetic operation device uses the difference between the offsets of the image-forming positions, an optical characteristic amount of the image-forming lenses, and the amount of shift detected when the distance to the measuring object is measured, to determine the distance to the measuring object.

Distance measuring apparatus

A distance-measuring apparatus includes light-sensitive devices formed of optical sensor arrays disposed on image-forming surfaces of right and left image-forming lenses, respectively. The apparatus uses image data from the optical sensor arrays of the light-sensitive devices to determine the distance from an object such as a vehicle in front of the apparatus via a distance detection circuit and capable of detecting condensation or a foreign particle obscuring a cover glass or defective pixels in the optical sensor arrays. In a defective condition, a defective visibility sensor emits an alarm signal to alert the operator.

A method of the invention corrects a detection error, caused by an assembly error, in a distance or a distance-related index detected from an image captured in the visual field of an image detection module including an optical device and a pair of image sensing devices, each including a plurality of image sensors. In the method, the visual field is divided into windows disposed in a two-dimensional matrix format in order to detect the distance or a parallax for a pair of images in each window; the characteristics of an error is expressed in a detected value caused by an angle error in the assembly of the image detection module, as a quadratic polynomial for two angle variables indicating the position of the window within the visual field; parallax for a plurality of windows is detected after a test sample image has been provided to the module; the coefficient value for each term in the polynomial is determined based on the results of the detection, and these values are stored in a storage device; and, when using the image detection module to detect actual distances, the detected value for each window is corrected by adding to it the value of the polynomial to which the stored values of the coefficients and the values of the variables indicating the position of the window are applied.

Growing community of inventors

Nagano, Japan

Akio Izumi