CLOSE-RANGE ELECTRONIC DISTANCE MEASUREMENT

• Main Author: STUTZ, Reto
• Format: Patent
• Language: English; French; German
• Published: 12.01.2022
• Subjects: GYROSCOPIC INSTRUMENTS; MEASURING; MEASURING DISTANCES, LEVELS OR BEARINGS; NAVIGATION; PHOTOGRAMMETRY OR VIDEOGRAMMETRY; PHYSICS; SURVEYING; TESTING

The present invention relates to a surveying instrument and method for accurately determining the distance to a, in particular retro-reflective, target in the close range for a specific setup of the surveying instrument, where the central part of the received ray bundle is shaded by a component of the optical unit of the surveying instrument. When targeting on the target in an on-target state, such as according to the state of the art, the accuracy of the distance measurement decreases in the close range, say the closer the target is located to the surveying instrument, due to spatial and temporal inhomogeneities of the beam profile. The present invention proposes to target on the target in a misaligned targeting state, such that the reflected measuring beam impinges on a part of the detector surface, which is not shaded, thereby leading to an increased measuring accuracy. By shifting the impinging position of the reflected measuring beam on the detector surface such, that it is shifted out of the shaded part of the detector, by averaging the distance measurement values of the spatially inhomogeneous beam profile. In order to further increase the measuring accuracy, the distance measuring values can furthermore be averaged over time.The present invention furthermore relates to a computer program product, wherein the computer program product is saved on a machine-readable carrier, particularly saved on a surveying instrument according to the present invention, or a computer-data-signal for the implementation of an inventive method.