Denso Corporation

Espros Photonics Ag

Toshiaki Nagai

Sakito Miki

Kenichi Yanai

Martin Popp

Cengiz Tugsav Kupcu

An optical distance measurement apparatus includes a light source unit configured to emit pulsed light in units of the number of times determined in advance, a light receiving unit including a light receiving element which receives pulsed light reflected from a first object and configured to output a response signal in accordance with received light intensity of the pulsed light, and a control unit configured to generate a histogram by accumulating and recording the response signal output from the light receiving unit, corresponding to the number of times, in a time bin in accordance with time of flight of the pulsed light and calculate a distance to the object on the basis of the histogram. The control unit changes a light emission interval of the pulsed light by the light source unit within a unit of the number of times.

Optical distance measurement apparatus

A light range finding apparatus is provided with a light emitting optical system that projects a pattern light having an irradiation region and a non-irradiation region; a light receiving sensor including an arrayed light receiving element; a light receiving optical system that receives a reflected light of the pattern light and enlarges a portion of the reflected light corresponding to the irradiation region to be larger than a single light receiving element and causes the enlarged reflected light to be incident on the light receiving sensor; a distance measurement unit that measures a distance to the object based on an output of the light receiving sensor; and a positional alignment section that performs, based on the output of the light receiving sensor, a positional alignment of at least a part of the light emitting optical system and the light receiving optical system.

Light range finding apparatus

In a distance measuring apparatus, an irradiating unit irradiates a measurement region with a pattern light comprised of first and second luminous patterns. The second luminous pattern has a relatively low intensity lower than the intensity of the first luminous pattern. A light receiving sensor receives, for each pixel, a return light component based on reflection of the pattern light by a target object. A measurement controller determines whether an intensity of each return light component received by the corresponding pixel satisfies a measurement condition, and obtains, as effective distance information, at least one distance value of at least one pixel of the light receiving sensor when it is determined that the intensity of the return light component received by the at least one pixel satisfies the measurement condition.

Distance measuring apparatus, recognizing apparatus, and distance measuring method

A digital signal processing circuit measures a distance according to a plurality of modulation frequencies including a first modulation frequency and a second modulation frequency lower than the first modulation frequency. The digital signal processing circuit is configured such that, when measuring the distance at the first modulation frequency, a storage capacitance of a light receiving elementstores or discharges electric charges according to the timing when the polarity of a phase is controlled by a light emission control unit at each transmission of a sub sequence and the distance is measured according to the electric charges stored in the storage capacitance. The digital signal processing circuit corrects the distance measurement result based on the measurement result at the first modulation frequency and the measurement result at the second modulation frequency.

Time-of-flight distance measurement device

The present disclosure relates to a time-of-flight distance measuring device. The light source () includes a plurality of emitting portions (), each of which illuminates a respective one of the sub-regions (R, R). The light receiver () includes a plurality of receiving portions () corresponding to respective ones of the emitting portions (). The first controller () controls (i) a first emitting portion () to emit the emitted light including an N-order harmonic component of a fundamental frequency and (ii) a second emitting portion () to emit the emitted light including an M-order harmonic component. The second controller () controls a particular receiving portion () corresponding to the first emitting portion () to be sensible to the N-order M-order harmonic components. The multipath detector () detects occurrence of the multipath error when the particular receiving portion () senses both the N-order and M-order components.

Time-of-flight distance measuring device and method for detecting multipath error

In a time-of-flight distance measurement device, a light receiving device is driven by a sequence having a matrix of a phase number n, a value sampled on the basis of the n rank matrix with respect to the phase number n is linearly calculated, and a waveform equivalent to the waveform sampled in a 1/n step is detected. A linear operation is performed on a sampled value based on the matrix with the rank n with respect to the phase number n, thereby being capable of restoring the waveform equivalent to the waveform sampled in the 1/n steps, and determining whether the shape of the light emission waveform is normal, or not. As a result, the shape of the light emission waveform can be monitored without interrupting a distance measurement.

A light emitting element emits a modulated light modulated in a pattern having a repetitive period toward a space. A driving unit drives the light emitting element. A light receiving element distributes charges corresponding to an incident light containing a reflected light obtained by reflecting the modulated light on an object to storage capacitors and stores the distributed charges. A control unit controls an exposure of the light receiving element. A signal processing unit measures a distance to the object by using a value sampled by the light receiving element. The control unit controls the exposure of the light receiving element to give a sensitivity to at least one high-order harmonic. The signal processing unit linearly combines a component of a fundamental wave with a component of the at least one high-order harmonic to measure the distance to the object.

Time-of-flight distance measurement device and method for same

A time-of-flight distance measuring device divides a base exposure period into a plurality of sub exposure periods and holds without resetting an electric charge stored in the sub exposure period for a one round period which is one round of the plurality of sub exposure periods. The distance measurement value of short time exposure is acquired during the one round period and the distance measurement value of long time exposure is acquired during a plurality of the one round periods. Both of the distance measurement value of the long time exposure and the distance measurement value of the short time exposure can be acquired from the same pixel. With this, a dynamic range is expanded without being restricted by a receiving state of reflected light, optical design of received light, and an arrangement of pixels.

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Kariya, Japan

Toshiaki Nagai