Distance measuring is done by ranging. It's a well-established word with millions of hits on Google. Even the well-known radar originally stood for "RAdio Detection And Ranging".
Survey(ing) is a much broader term. It also measures horizontal and vertical angles, elevations, GPS coordinates, etc. Surveying is determined not by the tool, but by the goal — making a space model of something big, but not too big. A house or a land plot are subjects of surveying, but not a continent, which is the subject of another subdiscipline of geodesy, named astronomical geodesy. As for bacterias, they are measured by micrometry, if I remember correctly.
Metrology measures anything for the improvement of the tools and standards for the actual measuring. That includes distances, but also time, angles, temperature, current...
Geometry in the original sense was the same thing as survey today.
From M-W:
perfunctory: used to describe something that is done without
energy or enthusiasm because of habit or because it is expected [emphasis added]
From Dictionary.com:
perfunctory:
performed merely as a routine duty; hasty and superficial [emphasis added]
These definitions of perfunctory fit your original sense well. You weren't using perfunctorily incorrectly.
Best Answer
Such an action could be described as "obligatory" or "compulsory," I think. They have been told or required to do it, but don't necessarily want to, or know why.
Both of these words would describe an action that otherwise wouldn't be done if they didn't have to. This doesn't clearly give the impression of being uninformed, though, just that the person has no other reason to do it other than that they know they have to.
Another option would be "blindly." To do something blindly would mean that you don't know why you are doing it, or what the end result will be.