Displacement sensor

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11294057-B2
Application number	US-201816127256-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 11, 2018
Priority date	Oct 27, 2017
Publication date	Apr 5, 2022
Grant date	Apr 5, 2022

Abstract

A displacement sensor includes an emitting unit periodically emitting pulse signals; a receiving unit receiving reflection signals generated from the pulse signals and reflected by an object and outputs binary signals that indicate signal intensity of the received reflection signals; a waveform summation unit generating a summation waveform by accumulating temporal waveforms of the binary signals for the respective corresponding periods of time with reference to emission timings of the corresponding pulse signals; a distance calculation unit calculating a value that indicates a distance to the object on the basis of waveform features corresponding to waveform features of the pulse signals that appear in the summation waveform; and a reception signal amount calculation unit calculating a reception signal amount that is intensity of the reflection signals received by the receiving unit on the basis of feature amounts indicated by cumulative values that appear in the summation waveform.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A displacement sensor comprising:
a case body;
an emitting unit that is disposed in the case body and periodically emits pulse signals;
an output unit that is disposed on one side surface of the case body and visually outputs information indicating a magnitude of the calculated reception signal amount;
a receiving unit that receives reflection signals that are generated from the pulse signals emitted from the emitting unit and reflected by an object and outputs binary signals that indicate signal intensity of the received reflection signals;
a waveform summation unit that generates a summation waveform by accumulating a plurality of temporal waveforms of the binary signals for respective corresponding periods of times with reference to emission timings of the corresponding pulse signals;
a distance calculation unit that calculates a value that indicates a distance to the object on the basis of waveform features corresponding to waveform features of the pulse signals that appear in the summation waveform;
a reception signal amount calculation unit that calculates a reception signal amount that is intensity of the reflection signals received by the receiving unit on the basis of feature amounts indicated by one or a plurality of cumulative values that appear in the summation waveform; and
an output determination unit that determines whether or not the object is present on the basis of a value indicating the distance calculated by the distance calculation unit,
wherein the output determination unit changes a hysteresis width for switching between a determination result that the object is present and a determination result that the object is not present, in accordance with the magnitude of the calculated reception signal amount.

2. The displacement sensor according to claim 1 , further comprising:
an external output unit that is disposed on an other side surface of the case body and externally outputs information indicating a magnitude of the calculated reception signal amount.

3. The displacement sensor according to claim 1 ,
wherein the emitting unit causes at least one of an intensity and a length of an emitting period of a pulse signal to be emitted, to change in accordance with the magnitude of the calculated reception signal amount.

4. The displacement sensor according to claim 1 ,
wherein the receiving unit causes reception gains with respect to the reflection signals to change in accordance with the magnitude of the calculated reception signal amount.

5. The displacement sensor according to claim 1 ,
wherein the waveform summation unit causes a number of temporal waveforms of the binary signals that are used to generate the summation waveform to change in accordance with the magnitude of the calculated reception signal amount.

6. A displacement sensor, comprising:
a case body;
an emitting unit that is disposed in the case body and periodically emits pulse signals;
an output unit that is disposed on one side surface of the case body and visually outputs information indicating a magnitude of the calculated reception signal amount;
a receiving unit that receives reflection signals that are generated from the pulse signals emitted from the emitting unit and reflected by an object and outputs binary signals that indicate signal intensity of the received reflection signals;
a waveform summation unit that generates a summation waveform by accumulating a plurality of temporal waveforms of the binary signals for respective corresponding periods of times with reference to emission timings of the corresponding pulse signals;
a distance calculation unit that calculates a value that indicates a distance to the object on the basis of waveform features corresponding to waveform features of the pulse signals that appear in the summation waveform; and
a reception signal amount calculation unit that calculates a reception signal amount that is intensity of the reflection signals received by the receiving unit on the basis of feature amounts indicated by one or a plurality of cumulative values that appear in the summation waveform;
wherein the reception signal amount calculation unit calculates the reception signal amount on the basis of a magnitude of an inclination of a waveform edge in the summation waveform in which the inclination of the waveform edge is an amount of change in the cumulative values with respect to time.

7. A displacement sensor according to claim 1 , comprising:
a case body;
an emitting unit that is disposed in the case body and periodically emits pulse signals;
an output unit that is disposed on one side surface of the case body and visually outputs information indicating a magnitude of the calculated reception signal amount;
a receiving unit that receives reflection signals that are generated from the pulse signals emitted from the emitting unit and reflected by an object and outputs binary signals that indicate signal intensity of the received reflection signals;
a waveform summation unit that generates a summation waveform by accumulating a plurality of temporal waveforms of the binary signals for respective corresponding periods of times with reference to emission timings of the corresponding pulse signals;
a distance calculation unit that calculates a value that indicates a distance to the object on the basis of waveform features corresponding to waveform features of the pulse signals that appear in the summation waveform; and
a reception signal amount calculation unit that calculates a reception signal amount that is intensity of the reflection signals received by the receiving unit on the basis of feature amounts indicated by one or a plurality of cumulative values that appear in the summation waveform;
wherein the reception signal amount calculation unit calculates the reception signal amount on the basis of an area that appears in the summation waveform and is defined by an inclination of a waveform edge in the summation waveform, the area is associated with a predefined reference point, and the predefined reference point is a crossing point between the waveform edge in the summation waveform and a determination threshold value.

8. A displacement sensor, comprising:
a case body;
an emitting unit that is disposed in the case body and periodically emits pulse signals;
an output unit that is disposed on one side surface of the case body and visually outputs information indicating a magnitude of the calculated reception signal amount;
a receiving unit that receives reflection signals that are generated from the pulse signals emitted from the emitting unit and reflected by an object and outputs binary signals that indicate signal intensity of the received reflection signals;
a waveform summation unit that generates a summation waveform by accumulating a plurality of temporal waveforms of the binary signals for respective corresponding periods of times with reference to emission timings of the corresponding pulse signals;
a distance calculation unit that calculates a value that indicates a distance to the object on the basis of waveform features corresponding to waveform features of the pulse signals that appear in the summation waveform;
a reception signal amount calculation unit that calculates a reception signal amount that is intensity of the reflection signals received by the receiving unit on the basis of feature amounts indicated by one or a plurality of cumulative values that appear in the summation waveform; and
a filtering processing unit that performs filtering processing on a summation waveform that is generated by the waveform summation unit,
wherein the reception signal amount calculation unit calculates the feature amounts indicated by the one or the plurality of

Assignees

• Omron Tateisi Electronics Co

Inventors

• Iida Yusuke
• Tsuzuki Ryosuke
• Ohnaka Shoichi
• Iguchi Koji
• Harada Osamu

Classifications

• G01S17/10 Primary

  using transmission of interrupted, pulse-modulated waves (determination of distance by phase measurements G01S17/32) · CPC title

• G01S17/88

  Lidar systems specially adapted for specific applications · CPC title

• G01S7/4865

  Time delay measurement, e.g. time-of-flight measurement, time of arrival measurement or determining the exact position of a peak (peak detection in noise, signal conditioning G01S7/487) · CPC title

• G01S7/4861

  Circuits for detection, sampling, integration or read-out · CPC title

• G01S17/14 Primary

  wherein a voltage or current pulse is initiated and terminated in accordance with the pulse transmission and echo reception respectively, e.g. using counters · CPC title