A high-speed image acquisition system for robotics

Abstract

There are many applications in industry for imaging systems. The majority of these use a video camera as the input device. The output from the camera is sampled and stored in memory and a computer used to analyse the image. Until recently, the time for the analysis of the image was relatively long in comparison with the acquisition time of the image. However, with the development of new high-speed microprocessors decreasing the processing time, the acquisition time of the image will become the limiting factor of the analysis rate. This paper describes the development of a prototype system to make possible the capture of a full frame image (256 lines), in under 15 ms, for analysis by a computer. With the use of programmable logic devices (PLDS) and hardware windowing techniques, the acquisition time for a part frame (40 lines) is 2.8 ms. Shorter acquisition times can be obtained, but with reduned resolution. An application of the imaging system is also presented.