The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 15, 2020
Filed:
Aug. 10, 2017
Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (US);
Shingo Mandai, Mountain View, CA (US);
Cristiano L Niclass, San Jose, CA (US);
Richard E Bills, San Jose, CA (US);
Moshe Laifenfeld, Haifa, IL;
Mina A. Rezk, Haymarket, VA (US);
Alexander Shpunt, Portola Valley, CA (US);
Ron Sokolovsky, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Tal Kaitz, Kiryat Ono, IL;
Ronen Akerman, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Jason D. Mudge, San Francisco, CA (US);
Andrew J Sutton, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
APPLE INC., Cupertino, CA (US);
Abstract
An electro-optical device includes a laser, which is configured to emit toward a scene pulses of optical radiation. An array of detectors are configured to receive the optical radiation that is reflected from points in the scene and to output signals indicative of respective times of arrival of the received radiation. A controller is coupled to drive the laser to emit a sequence of pulses of the optical radiation toward each of a plurality of points in the scene and to find respective times of flight for the points responsively to the output signals, while controlling a power of the pulses emitted by the laser by counting a number of the detectors outputting the signals in response to each pulse, and reducing the power of a subsequent pulse in the sequence when the number is greater than a predefined threshold.