TechVision has provided industry-leading machine vision software products, technical services and one-stop solutions to nearly 10,000 customers in more than 20 industries, especially in the 3C industry, manufacturing industry, laser industry, automotive industry, hardware printing and energy industry.
As the "brain" of a machine vision inspection system, Techtronic Industries' latest CK-IMGPRO-1802 image processor boasts a compact and agile design with exceptional performance. Its rich interfaces enable easy communication with third-party devices, and it features high stability, low cost, and rapid response. It is suitable for applications such as robotic arm guidance, tracking, positioning, measurement, and recognition.
In machine vision projects, inspection applications are a particularly challenging task. Techtronic Industries' newly launched CKVisionBuilder high-precision line scan vision system provides a wider field of view and sharper object detection. The CKVisionBuilder system requires relative motion between the camera and the object, typically along a conveyor belt or rotation axis. As the object moves past the camera, the camera captures a new pixel line. The vision processor stores each pixel line and then reconstructs the pixel data into the final 2D image.
Figure 1
Figure 2. Abundant interfaces for easy communication with third-party devices.
This special image acquisition process excels at acquiring images of discrete components moving rapidly on conveyor belts, detecting all sides of cylindrical objects, and constructing images of very large objects. Commercial equipment such as document scanners, copiers, and fax machines that scan documents into memory use line scanning technology. The same is true for production lines and distribution lines in the manufacturing and logistics sectors, which rely on this special technology to quickly acquire high-resolution images for performing the inspection of complex components.
In many applications, ensuring continuous and stable motion of moving objects is challenging, especially during assembly line speed increases or decreases. Speed variations affect the aspect ratio of the acquired images. The CKVisionBuilder high-precision line scan vision system integrates motion control and vision systems, utilizing software algorithms to achieve unified and coordinated motion and vision processing. It can keep up with high-speed line acquisition rates of 67,000 lines per second, achieving high performance at a relatively low cost.
Figure 3 shows how the robotic arm uses the built-in image processing software CKVisionBuilder of the CK-IMGPRO-1802 image processor to quickly perform product guidance, tracking, positioning, measurement, and identification applications.
Figure 4
The CKVisionBuilder high-precision line scan vision camera system consists of the following parts:
① An embedded system consisting of an ARM processor, an FPGA, and a sensor, integrating motion control, vision acquisition, and vision processing. This system includes vision processing software, motion control software, a light source, a lens, and other components.
② Motor driver: This part receives the motion signal from system ①, amplifies it, and drives the motor to rotate. The rotation of the motor causes the object on the platform to move.
⑤ A movable platform, mainly used to support the object being photographed and to move the object at a constant speed.
⑥ Motor: The motor is the power unit for platform movement.
④ The encoder provides feedback on the motor's direction and speed to the camera, transmitting the linear motion of the conveyor belt to the line scan camera and indicating when to capture the next line in the image. Encoders are typically mounted on a shaft, providing signals to indicate motion. Some encoders generate two separate signals (A and B), based on which line direction and finer-grained motion-related information can be detected. Line scan systems can be used in conjunction with either hardware (motion-based) encoders or software (time-based and motion-calculated) encoders.
Implementation method:
The motion control program drives the motor to rotate via a motor driver, which in turn rotates the platform. This achieves the motion of the object being measured. During the motor's rotation, the encoder feeds back the motor's speed information to the motion control system and the vision acquisition system.
The motion control system uses feedback speed information to control the platform's movement, ensuring it moves at a predetermined constant speed. The image acquisition system synchronously acquires data based on encoder feedback; multiple image acquisitions combine to form a complete image of the object under test. Image processing software analyzes and processes the images to perform object visual recognition/judgment.
As shown in Figure 4. The advantages of this system:
1. No fixed size: Some line scan cameras can adjust the length of the acquired image to an infinite length. This allows for the creation of seamless, continuous images between frames in certain situations.
2. High resolution: Line scan images often reach 80 megabytes or more of pixel data. Shorter exposure time: Area scan cameras typically require longer exposure times than line scan cameras.
3. It can unfold cylindrical objects for detection, adding vision to space-constrained application environments and acquiring high-resolution images at low cost.
4. It integrates motion control, image acquisition, image processing, and result judgment output into one unit, saving space and cost while offering excellent performance.
