CN110780312B - Adjustable distance measuring system and method - Google Patents
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- G01S—RADIO DIRECTION-FINDING; RADIO NAVIGATION; DETERMINING DISTANCE OR VELOCITY BY USE OF RADIO WAVES; LOCATING OR PRESENCE-DETECTING BY USE OF THE REFLECTION OR RERADIATION OF RADIO WAVES; ANALOGOUS ARRANGEMENTS USING OTHER WAVES
- G01S17/00—Systems using the reflection or reradiation of electromagnetic waves other than radio waves, e.g. lidar systems
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Abstract
The invention discloses an adjustable distance measuring system, comprising: an emitter comprising an array of light sources consisting of a plurality of sub-light sources, the emitter configured to emit a plurality of line-shaped light beams, the plurality of sub-light sources being independently addressable at least in part to be dynamically controlled to change at least one of a line direction, a line width, a spacing, or a scan direction of the plurality of line-shaped light beams; a collector configured to collect at least a portion of the light signals in the linear light beam reflected back by an object; and the processing circuit is connected with the emitter and the collector and used for calculating the flight time from the emission to the collection of the linear light beam according to the optical signal. The invention realizes scanning distance imaging through the dot matrix light source, and can not only reduce the scale and storage of the reading circuit, but also improve the signal-to-noise ratio because only part of pixel units need to read data at one time.
Description
Technical Field
The invention relates to the technical field of computers, in particular to an adjustable distance measuring system and method.
Background
The Time of flight (TOF) method calculates the distance of an object by measuring the Time of flight of a light beam in space, and is widely applied to the fields of consumer electronics, unmanned driving, AR/VR, and the like due to its advantages of high precision, large measurement range, and the like.
Distance measurement systems based on the time-of-flight principle, such as time-of-flight depth cameras, lidar and other systems, often include a light source transmitting end and a receiving end, where the light source transmits a light beam to a target space to provide illumination, the receiving end receives the light beam reflected back by the target, and the system calculates the distance to the object by calculating the time required for the light beam to be transmitted to the target space.
At present, the laser radar based on the flight time method mainly comprises a mechanical type and a non-mechanical type, the distance measurement of a 360-degree large field of view is realized through a rotating base in the mechanical type, a single-point light source and a linear light source are generally adopted at an emitting end of the laser radar, and the laser radar has the advantages of concentrated light beam intensity, large measurement range, high precision and low frame rate due to long scanning time; generally, a non-mechanical intermediate-area array lidar transmits an area light beam with a certain field of view to a space at one time through an area light source and receives the area light beam through an area array receiver, so that the resolution and the frame rate of the non-mechanical intermediate-area array lidar are improved, but the non-mechanical intermediate-area array lidar has the defects of weak light intensity, poor signal-to-noise ratio and small measurement range, and in addition, because each pixel on the area array receiver needs to be demodulated at the same time, the requirements on the scale, the storage and the power consumption of a reading circuit (such as a TDC circuit) are high.
The above background disclosure is only for the purpose of assisting understanding of the inventive concept and technical solutions of the present invention, and does not necessarily belong to the prior art of the present patent application, and should not be used for evaluating the novelty and inventive step of the present application in the case that there is no clear evidence that the above content is disclosed at the filing date of the present patent application.
Disclosure of Invention
The present invention is directed to an adjustable distance measuring system and method to solve at least one of the above problems.
In order to achieve the above purpose, the technical solution of the embodiment of the present invention is realized as follows:
an adjustable distance measurement system comprising: an emitter comprising an array of light sources consisting of a plurality of sub-light sources, the emitter configured to emit a plurality of line-shaped light beams, the plurality of sub-light sources being independently addressable at least in part to be dynamically controlled to change at least one of a line direction, a line width, a spacing, or a scan direction of the plurality of line-shaped light beams; a collector configured to collect at least a portion of the light signals in the linear light beam reflected back by an object; and the processing circuit is connected with the emitter and the collector and used for calculating the flight time from the emission to the collection of the linear light beam according to the optical signal.
In some embodiments, the light source array includes at least two sub light source arrays, the plurality of linear light beams includes at least two linear light beam groups, and the sub light source arrays correspond to the linear light beam groups one to one.
In some embodiments, the sub-light sources in the at least two sub-light source arrays are staggered such that adjacent three sub-light sources form a delta arrangement pattern.
In some embodiments, the processing circuit is further configured to control the sub-light source arrays to be sequentially turned on to perform the scanning.
In some embodiments, the linear beam is formed by connecting spot beams emitted by a plurality of the sub-light sources.
The other technical scheme of the invention is as follows:
an adjustable distance measurement method comprising: controlling an emitter to emit a plurality of line-shaped beams, the emitter comprising a light source array consisting of a plurality of sub-light sources that can be independently addressed at least in part to be dynamically controlled to change at least one of a line direction, a line width, a pitch, or a scan direction of the plurality of line-shaped beams; controlling a collector to collect at least part of light signals in the linear light beams reflected back by an object; and calculating the flight time of the linear light beam from emission to collection according to the light signal.
In some embodiments, the light source array includes at least two sub light source arrays, the plurality of linear light beams includes at least two linear light beam groups, and the sub light source arrays correspond to the linear light beam groups one to one.
In some embodiments, the sub-light sources in the at least two sub-light source arrays are staggered such that adjacent three sub-light sources form a delta arrangement pattern.
In some embodiments, the method further comprises: and controlling the sub-light source arrays to be sequentially started through a processing circuit so as to realize scanning.
In some embodiments, the linear beam is formed by connecting spot beams emitted by a plurality of the sub-light sources.
The technical scheme of the invention has the beneficial effects that:
the invention realizes scanning distance imaging through the dot matrix light source, and because only part of pixel units need to read data at one time, the invention not only can reduce the scale and storage of a reading circuit, but also can improve the signal-to-noise ratio.
Drawings
In order to more clearly illustrate the embodiments of the present invention or the technical solutions in the prior art, the drawings used in the embodiments or the description of the prior art will be briefly described below, it is obvious that the drawings in the following description are only some embodiments of the present invention, and for those skilled in the art, other drawings can be obtained according to the drawings without creative efforts.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a distance measurement system according to one embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a schematic view of a light source according to one embodiment of the invention.
Fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of emitted beams projected by an emitter according to one embodiment of the present invention.
Fig. 4 is a schematic diagram of a pixel unit in a collector according to an embodiment of the invention.
Detailed Description
In order to make the technical problems, technical solutions and advantageous effects to be solved by the embodiments of the present invention more clearly understood, the present invention is further described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and the embodiments. It should be understood that the specific embodiments described herein are merely illustrative of the invention and are not intended to limit the invention.
It will be understood that when an element is referred to as being "secured to" or "disposed on" another element, it can be directly on the other element or be indirectly on the other element. When an element is referred to as being "connected to" another element, it can be directly connected to the other element or be indirectly connected to the other element. The connection may be for fixing or for circuit connection.
It is to be understood that the terms "length," "width," "upper," "lower," "front," "rear," "left," "right," "vertical," "horizontal," "top," "bottom," "inner," "outer," and the like are used in an orientation or positional relationship indicated in the drawings to facilitate the description of the embodiments of the invention and to simplify the description, and are not intended to indicate or imply that the device or element so referred to must have a particular orientation, be constructed in a particular orientation, and be constructed in a particular manner of operation, and are not to be construed as limiting the invention.
Furthermore, the terms "first", "second" and "first" are used for descriptive purposes only and are not to be construed as indicating or implying relative importance or implicitly indicating the number of technical features indicated. Thus, a feature defined as "first" or "second" may explicitly or implicitly include one or more of that feature. In the description of the embodiments of the present invention, "a plurality" means two or more unless specifically limited otherwise.
As an embodiment of the present invention, a distance measuring system is provided, which has a stronger resistance to ambient light and a higher resolution.
Referring to fig. 1, fig. 1 is a schematic view of a distance measuring system according to an embodiment of the present invention. The distance measuring system 10 comprises a transmitter 11, a collector 12 and a processing circuit 13; wherein the emitter 11 provides the emission beam 30 to the target space to illuminate the object 20 in the space, at least a part of the emission beam 30 is reflected by the object 20 to form the reflection beam 40, at least a part of the optical signal (photon) of the reflection beam 40 is collected by the collector 12, the processing circuit 13 is respectively connected to the emitter 11 and the collector 12, the trigger signals of the emitter 11 and the collector 12 are synchronized, and the time required for the emission beam from the emitter 11 to be received by the collector 12, i.e. the flight time t between the emission beam 30 and the reflection beam 40, is calculated according to the optical signal, and further, the distance D of the corresponding point on the object can be calculated by the following formula:
D＝c·t/2 (1)
where c is the speed of light.
The emitter 11 includes a light source 111, an optical element 112. The light source 111 may be a light source such as a Light Emitting Diode (LED), an Edge Emitting Laser (EEL), a Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL), or an array light source composed of a plurality of light sources, and preferably, the array light source 111 is a VCSEL array light source chip formed by generating a plurality of VCSEL light sources on a single semiconductor substrate. The light beam emitted by the light source 111 may be visible light, infrared light, ultraviolet light, or the like. The light source 111 emits a light beam outwards under the control of the processing circuit 13, for example, in an embodiment, the light source 111 emits a pulsed light beam at a certain frequency (pulse period) under the control of the processing circuit 13, which can be used in Direct time of flight (Direct TOF) measurement, the frequency is set according to a measurement distance, for example, the frequency can be set to 1MHz-100MHz, and the measurement distance is several meters to several hundred meters. It will be appreciated that the light source 111 may be controlled to emit the relevant light beam, such as a pulse signal generator, either as part of the processing circuitry 13 or independently of the sub-circuits present in the processing circuitry 13.
The optical element 112 receives the pulsed light beam from the light source 111, optically modulates the pulsed light beam, such as by diffraction, refraction, reflection, etc., and then emits the modulated light beam, such as a focused light beam, a flood light beam, a structured light beam, etc., into the space. The optical elements 112 may be in the form of one or more combinations of lenses, diffractive optical elements, masks, mirrors, MEMS mirrors, and the like.
The processing circuit 13 may be a stand-alone dedicated circuit, such as a dedicated SOC chip, an FPGA chip, an ASIC chip, etc., or may comprise a general-purpose processor, such as when the depth camera is integrated into a smart terminal, such as a mobile phone, a television, a computer, etc., where the processor in the terminal may be at least a part of the processing circuit 13.
In some embodiments, the distance measurement system 10 may further include a color camera, an infrared camera, an IMU, etc., and a combination thereof may implement more abundant functions, such as 3D texture modeling, infrared face recognition, SLAM, etc.
In some embodiments, emitter 11 and collector 12 may be arranged coaxially, i.e. they are implemented by an optical device with reflection and transmission functions, such as a half-mirror.
In some embodiments, the emitter includes an array of light sources consisting of a plurality of sub-light sources, the emitter configured to emit a plurality of line-shaped light beams; the collector is configured to collect at least part of the light signals in the linear light beams reflected back by the object; the processing circuit is connected with the emitter and the collector and used for calculating the flight time of the linear light beam from emission to collection according to the optical signal; the light source array comprises at least two sub light source arrays, the linear light beams comprise at least two linear light beam groups, and the sub light source arrays correspond to the linear light beam groups one to one.
In a direct time-of-flight distance measurement system using SPAD, a single photon incident on a SPAD pixel will cause an avalanche, the SPAD will output an avalanche signal to the TDC circuitry, and the TDC circuitry detects the time interval from the emission of the photon from the emitter 11 to the avalanche. After multiple measurements, histogram statistics is carried out on a time interval through a Time Correlation Single Photon Counting (TCSPC) circuit to recover the waveform of the whole pulse signal, the time corresponding to the waveform can be further determined, the flight time can be determined according to the time, so that accurate flight time detection is realized, and finally the distance information of the object is calculated according to the flight time.
For the sake of uniform description, it is assumed that the direction in which the line between emitter 11 and collector 12 is located is the lateral direction (x direction).
FIG. 2 is a schematic view of a light source according to one embodiment of the invention. The light source 111 is composed of a plurality of sub-light sources disposed on a single substrate 111 (or a multi-substrate), and the sub-light sources are arranged in a pattern on the substrate. The substrate may be a semiconductor substrate, a metal substrate, etc., and the sub-light sources may be light emitting diodes, edge emitting laser emitters, vertical cavity surface laser emitters (VCSELs), etc., and preferably, the light source 111 is an arrayed VCSEL chip composed of a plurality of VCSEL sub-light sources disposed on the semiconductor substrate. The sub-light sources are used to emit light beams of any desired wavelength, such as visible light, infrared light, ultraviolet light, and the like. The light source 111 emits light under modulation driving of a driving circuit (which may be part of the processing circuit 13), such as continuous wave modulation, pulse modulation, or the like.
In one embodiment, the light sources 111 may also emit light in groups or in whole under the control of the driving circuit, for example, the light source 111 includes a first sub light source array 201 (indicated by a circle with horizontal lines in fig. 2), a second sub light source array 202 (indicated by a circle with vertical lines in fig. 2), and the like, the first sub light source array 201 emits light under the control of the first driving circuit, and the second sub light source array 202 emits light under the control of the second driving circuit. The arrangement of the sub light sources may be a one-dimensional arrangement, a two-dimensional arrangement, a regular arrangement, or an irregular arrangement. It is to be understood that the light source 111 may also comprise a third sub light source array, a fourth sub light source array, etc.
An example is only schematically shown in fig. 2, in which the first sub-light source array 201 and the second sub-light source array 202 are both 8 × 5 regular array sub-light sources, and the first sub-light source array 201 and the second sub-light source array 202 are staggered in the lateral direction so that three adjacent sub-light sources form a triangular arrangement pattern. It is understood that the first sub-light source array 201 and the second sub-light source array 202 may also be regularly staggered so that adjacent four sub-light sources form a rectangular arrangement pattern. Due to the property requirements such as the aperture of the sub-light sources themselves and the manufacturing process requirements, the distance between two adjacent sub-light sources generally has the minimum physical limit, and for a rectangular arrangement pattern or a triangular arrangement pattern, the side length of the rectangle or the triangle will not be lower than the minimum physical limit, but the difference is that the distance between two adjacent sub-light sources along the transverse direction and/or the longitudinal direction will be smaller than the minimum physical limit by adopting the triangular arrangement pattern, so that the light source density can be improved to a certain extent to further improve the characteristics such as the power, the resolution and the like of the light beam emitted by the emitter 11.
In one embodiment, when the number of sub-light source arrays exceeds 2, the staggering between each other may also be staggered in the longitudinal direction.
Fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of the emitted light beams projected by the emitters according to one embodiment of the invention. The emitted light beam 30 includes a plurality of linear light beams, which are divided into a plurality of groups, for example, two linear light beam groups 301 and 302 in the present embodiment, and the light beam group means that only the linear light beams in the group are emitted at the same time. Each line-shaped light beam emitted here is formed by each column of sub-light sources in the light source 111, for example, in some embodiments, the sub-light sources emit spot light beams into the space after emitting light beams through the optical element 112, and when there is a connection between two adjacent spot light beams, a line-shaped light beam is formed; in other embodiments, the sub-light sources emit sub-linear light beams, such as cylindrical mirrors, into the space after passing through the optical element 112, and the sub-linear light beams of the sub-light sources are combined to form the linear light beam in fig. 3.
It is understood that the linear light beam groups correspond to the sub-light source arrays one to one, that is, when the sub-light source arrays are turned on, the corresponding linear light beam groups are generated and emitted into the space. The number of sub-light source arrays grouped is therefore the same as the number of linear beam groups, e.g. N sub-light source arrays will generate N linear beam groups. Thus, in one embodiment, beam scanning of a spatial region may be accomplished by sequentially turning on each of the sub-light arrays, the direction in which the sub-light arrays are turned on determining the direction of scanning. For example, in the embodiments shown in fig. 2 and fig. 3, sequentially turning on the sub-light source arrays 201 and 202 will sequentially generate linear light beam groups 301 (such as the lines indicated by the solid lines in fig. 3) and 302 (such as the lines indicated by the dashed lines in fig. 3), thereby completing the scanning of the spatial region. This approach will greatly reduce the number of scans compared to conventional linear scanning, thereby increasing scan time.
Fig. 4 is a schematic diagram of a pixel unit in a collector according to an embodiment of the invention. The pixel unit comprises a pixel array 41 and a readout circuit 42, wherein the pixel array 41 comprises a two-dimensional array of a plurality of pixels 410, wherein the pixel array is configured to collect at least part of the light beam reflected back by the object and generate a corresponding photon signal, and the readout circuit 42 is configured to process the photon signal to calculate the time of flight.
In one embodiment, the readout circuit 42 includes a TDC circuit 421 and a histogram circuit 422, which are used to draw a histogram reflecting the pulse waveform emitted by the light source in the emitter, and further, the time of flight may also be calculated according to the histogram, and the result is finally outputted. The readout circuit 42 may be a single TDC circuit and a histogram circuit, or may be an array readout circuit including a plurality of TDC circuit units and histogram circuit units.
In one embodiment, when the emitter 11 emits a linear light beam to the object to be measured, the optical element 112 in the collector 12 directs the linear light beam to the corresponding pixel, and generally, in order to receive as much as possible of the optical signal of the reflected light beam, the size of a single linear light beam is set to correspond to a plurality of pixels (here, the correspondence is understood to be imaging, and the optical element 112 generally includes an imaging lens), such as 14x2=28 pixels corresponding to a single linear light beam in fig. 4, that is, the photons reflected by the linear light beam are received by the corresponding 28 pixels with a certain probability.
When the sub-light source arrays are sequentially turned on, linear beam groups, such as the linear beam group 411 indicated by a solid line and the linear beam group 412 indicated by a broken line shown in fig. 4, are sequentially generated and imaged on the pixel unit. Therefore, the flight time calculation of all pixel units can be completed through multiple measurements. Compared with the traditional area array light source scheme, the invention can not only reduce the scale and storage of the reading circuit, but also improve the signal-to-noise ratio because only part of the pixel units need to read data at one time.
Generally, measurement systems 10 may be classified as coaxial and off-axis between emitter 11 and collector 12 depending on the arrangement. For the coaxial situation, the linear light beam emitted by the emitter 11 is reflected by the measured object and then collected by the corresponding pixel in the collector 12, and the position of the pixel is not influenced by the distance of the measured object; however, for the off-axis situation, due to the existence of parallax, when the distance of the object to be measured is different, the position of the linear light beam on the pixel unit will also change, and generally the linear light beam will shift along the direction of the baseline (the connection line between the emitter 11 and the collector 12, in the present invention, the direction of the baseline is uniformly indicated by the horizontal direction), so when the distance of the object to be measured is unknown, the position of the pixel is uncertain, which includes the uncertainty of the entire position of the linear light beam, and also includes the uncertainty of the position of the single linear light beam itself, such as the occurrence of bending, tilting, etc., in order to solve this problem, it is necessary to use the super-pixel technology (the super-pixel technology can refer to the relevant content in chinese patent application No. CN 201089188951, which is not described herein again), that a pixel region 413 (herein referred to as "super-pixel") composed of a plurality of pixels exceeding the number of pixels in the pixels corresponding to the linear light beam is set for receiving the linear light beam, and the size of the super-pixel region in the baseline (mainly the size in the direction of the baseline), it is necessary to consider the measurement range of the system 10 and the length of the super-pixel, so that the super-pixel region corresponding to the distance of the pixel in the baseline does not fall into the super-pixel region of the same distance of the corresponding to the super-pixel. In one embodiment, the size of the super pixel is set to be consistent with the distance between the imaging positions of the adjacent linear beams on the pixel unit in the linear beam group, in the embodiment shown in fig. 4, the linear beams occupy 2 pixels in the transverse direction, and the distance between the adjacent linear beams in the same linear beam group is 6 pixels, so that the size of the super pixel in the transverse direction can be set to be 6 pixels; the size in the vertical direction may be set according to the scale of the readout circuit, and may be 1 or another value, for example, 2 pixels in fig. 4.
In some applications, different scenes, different measurement ranges or different measurement requirements may have different requirements on the measurement system, and accordingly, the invention also provides an adjustable distance measurement system. In contrast to the aforementioned distance measurement system, the tunable distance measurement system has a sub-light source 111 that can be independently addressed at least partially to be dynamically controlled to change at least one of a line direction, a line width, a pitch, or a scanning direction of the line-shaped light beam, and in some embodiments, an adaptive adjustment of a pixel end, such as a super-pixel size, is required.
Specifically, the adjustable distance measuring system includes: an emitter comprising a light source array consisting of a plurality of sub-light sources, the emitter configured to emit a plurality of line beams, the plurality of sub-light sources being independently addressable, at least in part, to be dynamically controlled to change at least one of a line direction, a line width, a spacing, or a scan direction of the plurality of line beams; a collector configured to collect at least a portion of the light signals in the linear light beam reflected back by an object; and the processing circuit is connected with the emitter and the collector and used for calculating the flight time from the emission to the collection of the linear light beam according to the optical signal.
In one embodiment, such as the embodiment shown in fig. 2, the sub-light sources can be dynamically controlled to become 3 sub-light source arrays (201, 202, 203), 4 sub-light source arrays (201, 202, 203, 204), etc., and accordingly, 3 groups of linear light beams and 4 groups of linear light beams are generated, the distances between adjacent linear light beams in the light beam groups are different, when the linear light beams are imaged on the pixel units, the corresponding pixel distances are also different, at this time, the size of the super-pixel and the readout circuit also need to be adaptively adjusted, and the measurement ranges corresponding to different super-pixel sizes are also different. Therefore, the time-of-flight measurement of different measurement range targets by the same measurement system can be realized by dynamically controlling the sub-light source array, the super-pixel size and the readout circuit.
In one embodiment, the sub-light sources are controlled to form an array of sub-light sources, such as the array of sub-light sources formed by rows of sub-light sources in fig. 2, so that the generated linear light beam is a transverse linear light beam, and is aligned with the base line direction, and the scanning direction is perpendicular to the base line direction (longitudinal direction).
In one embodiment, the linear light beams with different widths can be generated by dynamically controlling the sub-light source array, for example, two columns of adjacent sub-light sources are synchronously turned on to generate a linear light beam wider than a single column of sub-light sources.
In one embodiment, the direction of the line beam and the scanning direction can be controlled by dynamic control of the array light source. For example, each sub-light source in the array light source is set to be independently addressed, and the sub-light source arrays can be arbitrarily combined, so that the direction of the linear light beam and the scanning direction can be dynamically adjusted. For example, in one measurement, the transverse linear beam is used for scanning along the longitudinal direction, and then the longitudinal linear beam is used for scanning along the transverse direction, so that a result with higher precision can be obtained.
The adjustable distance measuring system corresponding to the above embodiment, as an embodiment, further provides an adjustable distance measuring method, including the steps of:
controlling an emitter to emit a plurality of line-shaped beams, the emitter comprising a light source array consisting of a plurality of sub-light sources that can be independently addressed at least in part to be dynamically controlled to change at least one of a line direction, a line width, a pitch, or a scan direction of the plurality of line-shaped beams;
controlling a collector to collect at least part of light signals in the linear light beam reflected by the object;
and calculating the flight time of the linear light beam from emission to collection according to the light signal.
It should be noted that, the adjustable distance measuring method of the present embodiment is implemented by using the adjustable distance measuring system of the previous embodiment, and the technical solution of the method is the same as that of the previous adjustable distance measuring system, so that the detailed description is not repeated herein.
It will be appreciated that when the adjustable distance measuring system of the present invention is embedded in a device or hardware, corresponding structural or component changes may be made to accommodate the needs, the nature of which still employs the distance measuring system of the present invention and therefore should be considered as the scope of the present invention. The foregoing is a further detailed description of the invention in connection with specific/preferred embodiments and it is not intended to limit the invention to the specific embodiments described. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that numerous alterations and modifications can be made to the described embodiments without departing from the inventive concepts herein, and such alterations and modifications are to be considered as within the scope of the invention. In the description herein, references to the description of the term "one embodiment," "some embodiments," "preferred embodiments," "an example," "a specific example," or "some examples" or the like are intended to mean that a particular feature, structure, material, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment or example is included in at least one embodiment or example of the invention.
In this specification, the schematic representations of the terms used above are not necessarily intended to refer to the same embodiment or example. Furthermore, the particular features, structures, materials, or characteristics described may be combined in any suitable manner in any one or more embodiments or examples. Furthermore, various embodiments or examples and features of different embodiments or examples described in this specification can be combined and combined by one skilled in the art without contradiction. Although embodiments of the present invention and its advantages have been described in detail, it should be understood that various changes, substitutions and alterations can be made herein without departing from the scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
Moreover, the scope of the present application is not intended to be limited to the particular embodiments of the process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, means, methods and steps described in the specification. One of ordinary skill in the art will readily appreciate that the above-disclosed, presently existing or later to be developed, processes, machines, manufacture, compositions of matter, means, methods, or steps, that perform substantially the same function or achieve substantially the same result as the corresponding embodiments described herein may be utilized. Accordingly, the appended claims are intended to include within their scope such processes, machines, manufacture, compositions of matter, means, methods, or steps.
Claims (8)
1. An adjustable distance measurement system, comprising:
an emitter comprising a light source array comprised of a plurality of sub-light sources, the emitter configured to emit a plurality of line beams formed by combining light beams emitted by the plurality of sub-light sources, the line beams formed by interconnecting spot beams emitted by the plurality of sub-light sources, the plurality of sub-light sources being independently addressable at least in part to be dynamically controlled to change at least one of a line direction, a line width, a pitch, or a scan direction of the plurality of line beams;
a collector configured to collect at least part of the light signals in the linear light beam reflected back by an object;
and the processing circuit is connected with the emitter and the collector and used for calculating the flight time from the emission to the collection of the linear light beam according to the optical signal.
2. The adjustable distance measurement system of claim 1 wherein: the light source array comprises at least two sub light source arrays, the linear light beams comprise at least two linear light beam groups, and the sub light source arrays correspond to the linear light beam groups one to one.
3. The adjustable distance measurement system of claim 2 wherein: the sub-light sources in the at least two sub-light source arrays are staggered so that adjacent three sub-light sources form a triangular arrangement pattern.
4. The distance measuring system of claim 1 wherein: the processing circuit is also used for controlling the sub-light source arrays to be sequentially started to realize scanning.
5. An adjustable distance measuring method, comprising:
controlling an emitter to emit a plurality of linear beams, the emitter comprising a light source array composed of a plurality of sub-light sources, the linear beams being formed by combining light beams emitted by the plurality of sub-light sources, the linear beams being formed by interconnecting spot beams emitted by the plurality of sub-light sources, the plurality of sub-light sources being independently addressable at least in part to be dynamically controlled to change at least one of a line direction, a line width, a pitch, or a scan direction of the plurality of linear beams;
controlling a collector to collect at least part of light signals in the linear light beams reflected back by an object;
and calculating the flight time of the linear light beam from emission to collection according to the light signal.
6. An adjustable distance measuring method according to claim 5, characterized in that: the light source array comprises at least two sub light source arrays, the linear light beams comprise at least two linear light beam groups, and the sub light source arrays correspond to the linear light beam groups one to one.
7. The adjustable distance measuring method of claim 6, wherein: the sub-light sources in the at least two sub-light source arrays are staggered so that three adjacent sub-light sources form a triangular arrangement pattern.
8. The distance measuring method according to claim 5, further comprising: and the processing circuit controls the sub-light source arrays to be sequentially started to realize scanning.
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