Improvement of self-mixing semiconductor laser range finder and its application to range-image recognition of slowly moving object

An infrared range finder using a self-mixing laser diode (SM-LD), which has been proposed and developed by the Authors, can measure not only a range of a moving target but its velocity simultaneously. In this paper, described is that the precise mode-hop pulse train can be obtained by employing a new signal processing circuit even when the backscattered light returning into the SM-LD is much more weaker. As a result, the distance to a tilted square sheet made from aluminium or white paper, which is placed 10 cm through 60 cm from the SM-LD, is measured with accuracy of a few percent even when the tilting angle is less than 75 degrees or 85 degrees, respectively. And in this paper, described is the range-image recognition of a plane object under the condition of standstill. The output laser beam is scanned by scanning two plane mirrors-equipped with each stepping motor. And we succeeded in the acquisition of the range-image of a plane object in a few tens of seconds. Furthermore, described is a feasibility study about the range-image recognition of a slowly moving plane object.