Image processing expert Vision Components has developed a prototype of a stereo camera suited to a wide range of applications. Designed as an OEM single board camera measuring 60 x 100mm, the unit features two camera heads equipped with Sony CCD sensors which provide a 640 x 480 pixel resolution.
Using flex cables, the camera heads can be installed at nearly any distance and inclination angle. Stereo image recording with both sensor heads can be triggered externally or internally irrespective of exposure time. Featuring an integrated TMS320C64xx processor from Texas Instruments with a clock rate of 900MHz, the intelligent stereo camera, which is based on the proven VC Smart Cameras, executes all image processing routines. It comes with a working storage and program storage capacity of 64MB DDR RAM and 4MB Flash EPROM.
The camera features an Ethernet interface, two digital inputs and four outputs and an LVTTL parallel interface, allowing it to be easily integrated into existing automation environments. It operates with the proprietary real-time operating system VVCRT, which processes task changes with a maximum delay of 1ms. Like all VC cameras, the new model can be freely programmed in C and C++, which is facilitated by the VCLIB programming library and additional libraries (e.g. for 2D code recognition).
