Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd.

Panasonic Corporation

Masami Ito

Kanji Nishii

Atsushi Fukui

Kenji Takamoto

Kazumasa Takata

Masaru Fujita

Takanori Kikuchi

Yusuke Kusaka

Shohroh Mochida

Yoshihiko Kanayama

Hiroshi Watanabe

Ken Tatsuta

Ken Shimono

Koki Nakabayashi

Tatsuo Nagasaki

Masahiro Kuwabara

Tsuyoshi Tanaka

Makoto Kato

Hiroyuki Kawamura

Koji Funami

Hideaki Eto

Seiji Kumazawa

Tomotaka Furuta

Seiji Hamano

Shinji Kadoriku

Tsuyoshi Nomura

Toshiyuki Okada

Yohei Takechi

Yosuke Kawahito

Keiichi Fujikawa

Atsushi Hukui

Tomohisa Kishi

A light source device including a light guide plate and a light source, in which the light guide plate includes an incident surface on which light emitted from the light source is incident, an emission surface emitting light incident from the incident surface, and a propagating reflection surface which is a surface opposite to the emission surface and which propagates and reflects the light incident from the incident surface toward the emission surface, the propagating reflection surface has approximately V-shaped grooves and the V-shaped grooves have two kinds of grooves.

Light source device

An input operation device according to the present disclosure includes first to third light-emitting sections, a first light guide body, and a second light guide body. A lower end of the first light guide body faces the first light-emitting section and the second light-emitting section. The first mark emits light on the first light guide body when light is incident on the first light guide body from the first light-emitting section, and the second mark emits light on the first light guide body when light is incident on the first light guide body from the second light-emitting section. The upper surface section of the second light guide body emits light when light is incident on the second light guide body from the third light-emitting section. At least one of the first light-emitting section, the second light-emitting section, and the third light-emitting section can change light emission luminance.

Input operation device

Provided a light guide () including side surfaces on which light is incident, a reflection prism surface having plural prisms () on which light is reflected, and a light emitting surface from which the light is emitted, in which the reflection prism surface includes a first region (PA) in which a pitch of the prisms () varies and a second region (TA) in which a depth of the prisms () varies. In the light guide (), the first region is arranged in the side surface on which the light is incident, and a second region (TA) is arranged adjacent to the first region and in an inward side of the light guide ().

Light guide

A light guide plate includes an incident surface on which light outputted from point light sources is incident and an outgoing surface for outputting light incident from the incident surface. A reflection-and-propagation surface for reflecting light toward the outgoing surface is formed in a back surface opposite to the outgoing surface. The outgoing surface is made up of a propagation region adjacent to the incident surface, a propagation auxiliary region adjacent to the propagation region, a first diffusion-and-propagation region adjacent to the propagation auxiliary region, and a second diffusion-and-propagation region adjacent to the first diffusion-and-propagation region. The propagation region, the propagation auxiliary region, and the first diffusion-and-propagation region control hot spots and bright/dark lines in vicinities of the incident surface, while the second diffusion-and-propagation region controls viewing-angle characteristics of the light guide plate.

Light guide plate and surface light source device

A light guide plate having a first surface and a second surface opposite the first surface receives light in a first direction parallel with the second surface and emits the light towards the first surface in a third direction perpendicular to the first surface. The light guide plate includes a light receiving portion which receives the light; a light guiding path which guides the light in the first direction; and an emitting portion which emits the light by reflecting the guided light towards the first surface in the third direction. The emitting portion includes a plurality of V-shaped grooves extending on the second surface in a second direction crossing the first direction. Each V-shaped groove extends in the first direction and is formed so as to be deepest in the center in the second direction and become shallower as a distance from the center increases.

Light guide plate, die, and die processing method

A light guide plate includes an incident surface on which light outputted from point light sources is incident and an outgoing surface for outputting light incident from the incident surface, wherein a reflection-and-propagation surface for reflecting light toward the outgoing surface is formed in a back surface opposite to the outgoing surface. The outgoing surface is made up of a propagation region adjacent to the incident surface, a diffusion-and-propagation auxiliary region adjacent to the propagation region, and a diffusion-and-propagation region adjacent to the diffusion-and-propagation auxiliary region. Hot spots and bright/dark lines in vicinities of the incident surface are controlled primarily by curved portions of prism upper ends formed in the diffusion-and-propagation region, and viewing-angle characteristics of the light guide plate are controlled primarily by linear portions of the prisms.

A ratio of a length of resin flow-in to a radius of an optical component is not larger than 0.25, and gas is blown directly against a laser irradiated part radially and diagonally downward from an upside position corresponding to a center of the optical component. A laser line beam having longer sides extending in a direction along an inner wall is cast by a laser radiation device while being moved in the direction of the longer sides.

Optical component unit, laser joining method and apparatus for joining optical component

Positioned on a block is a filter for reflecting light &#x3bb;and transmitting another light &#x3bb;. First and second light guides are positioned on the block in an aligned relation to each other so that their angled ends oppose to each other. An adhesive is applied to the angled ends of the light guides for holding a filter. Light &#x3bb;is introduced in the light guides for adjusting the position of the light guides so that a predetermined amount of light is discharged from the light guide. A light receiver is positioned on the block through the adhesive and then light is introduced in the light guide for adjusting the position of the light receiver relative so that a predetermined amount of light is received by the light receiver. In particular, the adhesive has the same refractive index as the light guides.

Apparatus and method for transmitting and detecting light

In order to improve signal modulation characteristics and detect a position at a higher precision, collimated light of wavelength .lambda. and beam radius D enters a fixed diffraction plate and a movable diffraction plate comprising a grating of pitch 'p'. The grating has main diffraction components of orders .+-.1. The plates are arranged in parallel with a distance 'g' between them and generally perpendicular to an optical axis of the beam. The beam diffracted by the diffraction plates and in parallel to the optical axis of the beam is condensed with a condenser lens for limiting an incident pupil size to be within D-2 g.lambda./p. The amount of the light condensed by the condenser lens is detected by a photosensor. In a different example, a collimated light beam enters a first fixed plate and a rotary diffraction plate successively to transmit diffracted light of orders .+-.1. Then, the transmitting light is guided to a symmetrical point with respect to a rotation center of the rotary plate. Then, the beam is transmitted through the rotary plate and a second fixed plate which transmits only diffracted light of orders .+-.1. Then the beam is detected by a sensor. Then, even if the rotary plate has an eccentricity on the rotation thereof, fluctuations of the optical intensity of the beam are small, and a rotation angle can be detected with no accumulated errors. In order to detect a position of a moving diffraction plate precisely, a condenser lens is attached to the moving diffraction plate and first and second photosensors are provided on a trace of light transmitted through the condenser lens. A gap between the tow photosensors is smaller than a beam size of the condensed beam while a width of each of the two photosensors is larger than the beam size. A signal processor processes output signals of the photosensors to determine a position of the plate without being affected by the amount of light from a coherent light source.

Optical encoder for optically measuring displacement of moving body

A highly efficient, luminous and energy-saving panel-form illuminating system suitable for mass-production, comprising at least a photoconductor, a linear light source at one side of the photoconductor, and a reflector; wherein grooves or protrusions are formed on the bottom surface of the photoconductor.

Panel-form illuminating system

A position detecting element that enables a position to be detected at high speed and high precision, and a range sensor using the same. The position detecting element is provided with a PIN photodiode array 1 having n segments and a parallel arithmetic processing portion 2 that calculates the segment having maximum intensity by comparing n outputs from the segments of the PIN photodiode array 1. The range sensor includes a light source by which the object to be measured is irradiated by optical beam, a lens that gathers rays of the reflected light from the surface of the object to be measured and the position detecting element mentioned above that detects the position of the light gathered by the lens.

Position detecting element and range sensor

A back light illuminator for liquid crystal display apparatus comprises a fluorescent lamp, a light guide member, and a reflection plate enclosing the fluorescent lamp and an incident portion of the light guide member so as to reflect light rays toward the incident portion of the light guide member. The reflection plate has at least a curved portion having a parabolic cross-section or a elliptical cross-section so as not to reflect the light rays in a direction to the fluorescent lamp. Thus, absorption of reflected light by the fluorophor of the fluorescent lamp is minimized, and the luminance of the back light illuminator is increased.

Back light illuminator for liquid crystal display apparatus

The present invention provides an optical encoder capable of using the recesses and convexes of a movable plate and a fixed plate to accurately generate a Z phase signal in synchronism with an A/B phase signal. Phase type diffraction gratings on the moving and fixed plates including a plurality of tracks with different grating pitches cause parallel coherent beams to interfere with one another, and a light receiving part detects the intensity of light to obtain a plurality of synchronous signals with different periods. On the other hand, the light receiving part detects light spots formed by condensing elements on the movable plate to generates a single pulse per rotation as a reference position. One of the plurality of synchronous signals that has the shortest period is selected as an A/B phase signal that depends on the movement of the movable plate. The conjunction of the reference position signal and the plurality of synchronous signals is determined as a Z phase signal indicating the origin of the movable plate, thereby obtaining a Z phase signal in synchronism with one pulse of the A/B phase signal.

Optical encorder for detection having a moving reference point

An efficient, luminous and energy-saving panel-form illuminating system suitable for mass-production, comprising at least a photoconductor, a linear light source at one side of the photoconductor, and a reflector; wherein grooves or protrusions are formed on the bottom surface of the photoconductor.

An array light source 1 with semiconductor laser sources disposed one-dimensionally and a projective lens 2 are used to illuminate an inspected object so that light beams projected from the array light source form a dotted line on the object. A line sensor is used to receive through an objective lens 3 light emitted from an imaging area 11 away from an illuminated area 12. An image signal, fed to an image processing unit 8 through a pre-processing unit 7 producing an image from signals from the line sensor 4 and a stage 5 is processed, while the stage 5 bearing the object 6 is being gradually moved, to inspect the object 6 for crack defects 9 and 10 by detecting an optically nonhomogeneous portion of the object. The method allows a crack defect of an object, such as a ceramic substrate or a sintered metal product, to be detected fast with high accuracy.

Growing community of inventors

Moriguchi, Japan

Masami Ito