Kabushiki Kaisha Topcon

Takeshi Ishida

Nobuyuki Nishita

Goro Iwasaki

Jumpei Kochi

Hiroyuki Nakabe

Masahiro Saito

Hitoshi Otani

Atsushi Tanahashi

Junki Kaneko

Hiroshi Inaba

Jun Sasagawa

Hirokazu Yamada

Tomohiro Abe

Tetsuya Akimoto

The invention provides a surveying instrument comprising a frame unit rotatable in a horizontal direction, a telescope unit as mounted rotatably in a vertical direction on the frame unit, a driving unit for rotating and driving the frame unit and the telescope unit, a horizontal angle measuring unit for detecting a horizontal angle of the frame unit, a vertical angle measuring unit for detecting a vertical angle of the telescope unit and a control device, wherein the telescope unit has a telescope for sighting an object to be measured and a wide angle camera having a wider field angle than the telescope and for acquiring an image in a sighting direction, wherein the wide angle camera is set so that a sighting position of the sun is on a photodetection element and the sighting position of the sun is at a known position deviated from a field of view of the telescope, wherein the control device detects an image of the sun and a center of the image of the sun from an image acquired by the wide angle camera and controls the driving unit so that the center of the sun coincides with the sighting position of the sun, and is adapted to determine a true north based on a time moment, a horizontal angle, a vertical angle, a deviation between an optical axis of the telescope and the sighting position of the sun, and a latitude and a longitude of a position where the surveying instrument is installed, when the center of the image of the sun coincides with the sighting position of the sun.

Surveying instrument

The invention provides a surveying instrument, which comprises a control device having a reference clock signal generating unit for producing a reference clock signal. The control device produces a time signal to indicate a standard time from a signal acquired from the GNSS device, puts a time stamp on the time signal, associates the time signal with the reference clock signal, measures a horizontal angle at a moment when the telescope unit sights the sun and acquires an image signal, puts a time stamp on the image signal, calculates a standard time at a time of image acquisition, calculates an azimuth angle of the sun at the standard time based on a latitude and a longitude of a point where the surveying instrument is installed and a standard time at the time of image acquisition, and updates a horizontal angle by the azimuth angle.

The invention provides a surveying instrument, comprising a frame unit rotatable in a horizontal direction, a telescope unit as mounted rotatably in a vertical direction on the frame unit and further for sighting an object to be measured, a horizontal driving unit for rotating and driving the frame unit in a horizontal direction, a vertical driving unit for rotating the telescope unit in a vertical direction, a horizontal angle measuring unit for detecting a horizontal angle of the frame unit, a vertical angle measuring unit for detecting a vertical angle of the telescope unit and a control device, wherein the control device is adapted to calculate a solar altitude at a time moment by setting up coordinates of where the surveying instrument is installed and the time moment, and to make the telescope unit to set to the solar altitude as calculated by controlling the vertical driving unit, to control the horizontal driving unit, to execute searching of the sun by horizontally rotating the frame unit at the solar altitude as set up, to capture the sun, to sight the sun, to detect a horizontal angle under the sighted condition based on the horizontal angle measuring unit, and to survey a true north based on the horizontal angle as detected.

An omnidirectional camera having a camera for acquiring a digital image, an image data processing device for compressing a signal output from the camera and an external memory is disclosed. In the omnidirectional camera, a writing changeover unit accumulates signals output from a signal processing unit in one of a set of first internal memories until data is accumulated to a predetermined amount. When the data is accumulated to a predetermined amount, the writing changeover unit changes destinations and accumulates signals output from the signal processing unit in the other of the set of first internal memories. The signal is output to a data converting unit from the first internal memory where accumulation reaches the predetermined amount, and the data conversion unit compresses and converts an inputted signal to an image signal and the image signal is inputted to the external memory by an input/output control unit.

Omnidirectional camera

An omnidirectional camera comprises a camera mounting frame of cylindrical hollow body, a plurality of horizontal camera units, each of which is provided on a horizontal plane orthogonal to a center line of the camera mounting frame and adapted to acquire an image in a horizontal direction. A vertical camera unit is provided so as to coincide with the center line of the camera mounting frame and adapted to acquire an image in a zenith direction. A ring-like GPS antenna is provided so as to surround the vertical camera unit.

An omnidirectional camera comprises a camera having an image pickup element for acquiring a digital image, an image data processing device for compressing signals from the camera and for converting the signal to an image signal, and an external memory. The image data processing device has a signal processing unit, a writing changeover unit, a set of two first internal memories, a signal compensation unit, a data conversion unit, a third internal memory for temporarily storing the outputted data, and an input/output control unit for controlling the input/output of the data between the third internal memory and the external memory. The writing changeover unit accumulates signals outputted from the signal processing unit in one of the first internal memories until the signals are accumulated to a predetermined amount, and then, the writing changeover unit changes the destination of accumulation and repeatedly accumulates in the other first internal memory.

A geographic data collecting system, comprising a distance measuring unit for projecting a distance measuring light and for measuring a distance to an object to be measured, a camera for taking an image in measuring direction, a display unit for displaying the pickup image, a touch panel provided to correspond to a screen position of the display unit, a tilt sensor for detecting a tilting of the measuring direction, and an arithmetic unit for calculating a distance to the object to be measured by giving consideration on the tilting in the measuring direction and a point-to-point distance as specified on the image by specifying two or more points of the object to be measured on a displayed image via the touch panel.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo-to, Japan

Takeshi Ishida