An item that’s been on my public wish list for a long time is autofocus. This would make it so much easier to set up a camera, and to debug a vision system remotely. So I’m delighted to see that the technology is now starting to appear.
The latest entrant comes, surprisingly, from Scorpion Vision. Their UK operation is now offering, for 3,000 pounds (about $5,000,) an autofocus camera on the end of a flexible arm and a touchscreen interface. This they call the Autofocus Touch Video System.
The idea is that the camera can be placed in awkward, dangerous, or other hard-to-reach spots and then focused through the touch screen. There’s no image processing capability; it’s purely video, but I see it as a step in the right direction.
Now, I said I was surprised it came from Scorpion Vision. You might be wondering why.
Scorpion have set themselves up as a software company: they sell machine vision software. So why this monitoring system, and why from the UK arm?
My guess is that, when presented with the idea, Thor was skeptical but didn’t want to kill it dead. So he said, “Give it a go, and if it catches on I’ll give you a pat on the back.”
I for one hope it does catch on, (and if this plug helps generate sales, you can cut me in for a percentage!)
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6 comments:
You might take into mind that for a decent auto focus, quite some image processing software is necessary to determine if an image is sharp / into focus. The hardware is probably not much more than a lens on a small moving device. Anyway, it is not that surprising that a software company brings something with autofocus!
Well as far as I know the autofocus is part of the camera, in this case a camera from The Imaging Source, and you simply tell the camera to focus itself. At least that's the way it has been when I used cameras with an autofocus function. Scorpion probably only programmed the GUI.
I agree, it is a mechanical action to focus the camera, but how does the camera knows it is in focus? That's something that still needs to be 'calcualted' from the obtained images...
True, it is calculated by some software. I tried it with a FLIR A315 (yes, not really the same thing, but it is GigE Vision compliant, so close enough to a normal camera) and you simply set a variable of the interface to 'true', some magic happens and you get a sharp image. I'd say it's done on an FPGA, which means it would not have anything to do with Scorpion, if it works the same way on the camera of The Imaging Source mentioned here.
The solution is nice it is more than a clever auto focus - in this app it is a manual auto focus.
I have to jump in here to point out that Microscan offers automatic focus set-up on a large part of its smart camera and Auto ID reader range. The QX Hawk imager/code reader and the Vision HAWK Smart Camera have a built in liquid lens that can adjust the focal distance. This is done in setup mode by means of an on camera push button, an on screen button, or an external command or signal. The focus change can be automatic (based on what is in the scene) or manual (meaning person in the loop). The benefit is that part changeover can be achieved without manual lens twiddling or access to the camera. The Microscan Mini Hawk and Vision Mini achieve the same result with mechanical autofocus.
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