Teledyne’s Latest Image Sensor Designed for Various Machine Vision and Sorting Applications

New Line Scan CMOS 

What is a CMOS sensor? In every digital camera resides a CMOS sensor. The CMOS is responsible for turning the 3D world into a 2D pixelated image. The industrial automation industry has been utilizing digital cameras increasingly to add inspection or part present or positioning in a small package. 

This particular CMOS is a quad linear CMOS meaning it consists of four lines of sensor pixels that produce a high-quality continuous image (Our Line Scan Cameras).

 

Video used courtesy Teledyne DALSA

 

Line scan cameras have mostly been used in fax machines and scanners but are now finding their way into industrial automation for high-speed inspection without stopping the product.  

 

Teledyne e2v Tetra

This new sensor is available in resolutions 2k, 4k, 8k, and 16k with both color and monochrome versions. The Tetra CMOS reduces image noise by utilizing a synchronized shutter and a true correlated double sampling (CDC).  

A true CDC will record the charge of each pixel at rest and compare the charge when a picture is taken, therefore removing the background charge that could add noise to the image (Correlated double sampling).  

This CDC, along with a synchronized shutter, provides clearer images with reduced noise. The Tetra CMOS is also multispectral, offering RGB and NIR (near infer red), providing very clear and crisp color images. Image quality is not the only feature on the menu for the Tetra. This CMOS sensor has a max processing speed of 128kHz aggregate.  

 

Where Can Engineers Use the Sensor? 

The food and beverage industry utilizes machine vision quite frequently because of the multiple food types, shapes, and sizes. With a single camera, a user can detect discrepancies, size, and position of the product. These features need to be detected while the product moves along a conveyor belt and can not be stopped.  

 

The line scanner can be used in food and beverage applications. Image used courtesy of Teledyne Technologies

 

The line scanner allows an image to be produced while the product is moving and at a lower cost than typical CMOS sensors. With a typical vision sensor, if you wanted to build a continuous image, frames would have to overlap, causing wasted image real estate and large amounts of memory.  

With a line scanner, the user can efficiently build a continuous image to be accurately analyzed. With Tetra’s ability to produce continuous images at a high rate of speed, there may not be a need for expensive strobe lighting or other equipment.  

The food and beverage industry, in particular, has very high production demands. Teledyne recognized the need for a faster system that can process products at a quicker rate.  

This speed requirement drives the industry to inspect the fly or reject products without stopping the good product from being packaged. High-speed vision can be very expensive in hardware and integration, but the Teledyne Tetra line scanner may help reduce some of that cost. 

 

Featured image used courtesy of Teledyne Technologies