To provide an apparatus and a method whereby a wide measurement area is secured in a simple constitution an a position of a machine can be measured quickly and highly accurately.

A beam-shaping device 12 adjusts a spread angle of pulse laser beams 5 from a laser beam source 11 optionally. An image pickup element 13 picks up an image of a returning light from a corner cube mirror 4. A start trigger part 23 detects a part of the pulse laser beams 5 and generates a start trigger signal. A stop trigger part 31 detects a part of the returning light from the corner cube mirror 4 and sends a stop trigger signal for a comparator 35. A direction of the corner cube mirror 4 is specified from the image of the image pickup element 13, and a distance to the corner cube mirror 4 is specified from a time difference between the start trigger signal and stop trigger signal. A position of a helicopter 1 to the corner cube mirror 4 can be specified by the direction and the distance.