A distance measuring apparatus measures a distance to a target based on reflected light in response to launched laser beam. A distance measuring process includes generating a difference binary image from first and second range images that are respectively generated in states without and with the target in front of a background and represent distances to each of range measurement points, extracting a first region greater than a first threshold from a non-background region of the difference binary image made up of non-background points, grouping adjacent points on the second range image into groups of adjacent points having close distance values, for each point within the first region, to extract second regions corresponding to the groups, and extracting a third region smaller than a second threshold from the second regions, to judge that each point within the third region is edge noise.