“His eyes are too close together”

Most 3D imaging today is being performed with structured light, meaning depth is derived from the image of a line projected on to the object under inspection. It should be obvious then that building up a full 3D image demands relative motion between object and camera.

Other approaches include scanning the object with a series of lines, sometimes color, using a DLP projector device, or using two cameras in a stereo imaging setup.

Up until today, I though Point Grey was the only company selling a dedicated stereo imaging system – their Bumblebee line – but I now know that EPIX has a competing product: the Silicon Video 2KS.

EPIX is an interesting machine vision company. They’ve been around since Adam was a lad (my friend Adam Roberts, that is, who came of age in the 1980’s,) and have built a niche by consistently positioning themselves at the leading edge of vision technology. (A look at their website reveals a wide range of cameras and framegrabbers with interesting features.)

The Silicon Video 2KS stereo camera continues this tradition: with 2 2Mp sensors, it offers far more pixels than does the Bumblebee. It does however have a weakness: stereo vision relies on angular separation of the two imagers. Those in the Bumblebee are about five inches apart, my eyes are about 3 ¼ inches apart, but the 2KS has its eyes little more than one inch apart. As my grandmother once said about poor Adam Roberts, “I don’t like him; his eyes are too close together.”