Vision systems

Vision sensors are necessary for the robots to understand and interact with their surroundings. Depending on the task to be solved – object recognition, context understanding, navigation, quality control, safety monitoring – different sensors are necessary to enable safe robust analysis and performance.

ROBOTNOR researchers have experience in applying different sensor modalities for robotics, each with their individual strengths:

• Standard cameras – Cheap and ubiquitous
• Stereo cameras  – Cheap and with some 3D data
• Time-of-Flight cameras – Real-time dense 3D data
• Structured light cameras – High-precision 3D measurements
• Laser range finders – Good precision, long range and usable outdoors
• IR cameras – Thermal imaging
• Ultrasound – Small and cheap, works even in adverse light conditions
• Ultra-wide band radar – Provides information in almost all working conditions
• … and Next Generation 3D cameras – ROBOTNOR researchers are actively developing several new kind of 3D sensors, see our research pages for more

Selecting the right sensor may be the difference between a non-working and a robust solution.

Thermal image of process equipment	PMD Nano Time-of-Flight camera