Wyoming Patent of the Month – June 2021
Many gun enthusiasts are familiar with spotting and riflescopes. Spotting scopes are essentially small, high-powered telescopes. Since they can magnify at rates between 20x and 60x, they are often set on a tripod or some other stabilizing support structure to reduce image shake. Gunwerks, LLC has developed a new spotting scope complete with a laser range finder to better improve precision and accuracy in aiming.
Their scope allows for variable magnification, with a power ring to easily focus on their target. The addition of a laser transmitter allows the emission of a laser beam at a specific wavelength. This feature can be turned on and off whenever desired. When activated, the laser beam is emitted straight out, illuminating the target. This laser beam will reflect off of the object, sending reflected light back to the scope. This initial and returned light is tracked and processed to calculate the distance of the target. The reflected light is passed through a dichroic mirror which separates out the returned laser light from the regular visible light, providing the functionality of a laser range finder in a lightweight and simple way.
Furthermore, they incorporated a gesture based control mechanism. Since the scope is magnifying at great rates, pressing a button on the device to control it may cause shaking or unfocusing. Instead, the user can perform gestures in front of an infrared diode. The hand gesture changes the light and this changes detected by the sensor. These gestures could control how long the rangefinder should measure distance. The gestures can be programmed by the user for ultimate customization. This lightweight rangefinder combined with touchless control helps to reduce the weight and improve functionality of the spotting scope.
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