SoC-based real-time passive stereo image processing implementation and optimization

Stereo Image Processing as a part of three dimensional image processing become more and more important for industrial measuring, quality assurance and industrial automation. While classical image processing get it features from an image plane, additional information is obtained in direction of the optical axis. In comparison to active stereo methods, which need a projector or laser source and scanning device, passive stereo need at minimum two images from different perspectives. The paper starts with the basics of passive stereo, required optical setup and electronics. Some Information about the implementation of a stereo IP core in the used Xilinx SoC FPGA embedded system given. The program flow in ARM core and FPGA is illustrated. To get a high performance image processing system, the optimization of the parameters and the implementation settings on the used FPGA is very important. A comparison of several core parameter setups is done. Finally, some ways for further optimization with new hardware technologies are given

New education strategy in quality measurement technique with image processing technologies - chances, applications and realisation

According to the publication “New education strategy in quality measurement technique with image processing technologies” presented on the 14th Joint International IMEKO TC1+TC7+TC13 Symposium, in this paper further issues were discussed. So the theory of quality charts especially with the use of data sets generated with camera sensors are enlarged in this publication. Furthermore an additional application, developed in the department Quality assurance and Industrial Image Processing was added to this issue. The main focus of this paper lays on the realization, how to combine image processing with classical quality assurance methods. To gain the importance of this trial two industrial applications were used to describe the problem. Mostly the technical realization of sensor systems and data processing is completely separated to quality inspection tasks. To close this gap special trainings as well as special parts in the lectures were developed and structured. In sum it ends to one deepening direction, Opto Techniques in the consecutive Master - Bachelor program Optronic on the Ilmenau University of Technology

Smart parallel spectral imager based on heterogeneous FPGA system on chip

In the last years, industrial image processing has been shifting to areas and tasks that are increasing in complexity. This results in new challenges in order to contrast features to be detected or evaluated. Systems for the acquisition and interpretation of multispectral images are thus becoming more and more interesting. A major issue is, depending on the sensor principle, the time to acquire this spectral data. FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) and in particular heterogeneous FPGA SoC (System-on-Chip) offer the possibility to accelerate these acquisition methods decisively. In addition to the image acquisition, it is also possible to calculate decisive preprocessing steps in the hardware. A frequently used algorithm for analyzing but also compressing hyperspectral data is the PCA (principal component analysis). This paper presents a research setup that combines a heterogeneous FPGA SoC with a 12-channel filter wheel camera. With the help of the device a parallel working PCA is to be integrated, which works distributed in hardware and software. The paper presents the concept for this implementation and the current state of development in the project. In addition, restrictions on the development of algorithms with hardware systems and the current distribution in hardware and software are discussed

Investigation on a modular high speed multispectral camera

Multispectral imaging grows in importance in an increasing field of image processing applications. The reason for it is that they provide substantially more spectral information than for example RGB (red-green-blue) colour cameras. For this reason a multispectral camera is designed and developed at the department quality assurance of the Ilmenau University of Technology. Based on well known approaches for filter wheel cameras, a new modular concept was developed particularly for high speed applications. For the complex control and correction computations thereby a field programmable gate array (FPGA) is used