Why the FRAMOS D400e is the Right Choice for Industrial 3D Vision

At the core of industrial automation and the Internet of Things (IoT), systems are 3D cameras – technology enabling interconnected and automated processes in production lines, warehouses, and industrial facilities. 3D machine vision refers to advanced imaging systems that capture three-dimensional data for industrial applications, offering versatility in inspection, robot guidance, and measurement.

3D cameras deliver information about an object’s shape, distance, position, and degree of rotation in real-time. It enables robots to make informed decisions, select objects, handle them safely, and avoid collisions. A 3d vision system captures three-dimensional data for precise measurements and inspections, supporting quality control and detailed surface analysis.

On top of the high-quality image and reliable, fast, and stable connection required by any vision application, industrial 3D vision solutions have another set of challenges to overcome. Environmental conditions on the factory floor can significantly impact the performance and selection of 3D machine vision solutions, making it crucial to choose the right technology for specific application needs.

A harsh industrial environment could be problematic for the sensitive electronic components of the depth cameras, and it may also put additional pressure on the connectivity of the systems.

Industrial 3D cameras need to combine sophisticated imaging modalities with robust housing, industrial-grade connectors and robust interface to provide a safe, reliable, and ruggedized 3D solution ideal for harsh environments, with key features such as high precision and reliability.

Read our blog about the challenges of deploying 3D camera solutions in industrial and production environments. These solutions are designed for use directly on the factory floor, where high precision and robust performance are essential.

Introduction to the Industrial Stereo Depth Cameras: Advancing Vision in 3D

Industrial stereo depth cameras are transforming machine vision by delivering high-accuracy, three-dimensional images of target objects, even in the most demanding industrial environments. Unlike traditional imaging solutions, these cameras are engineered to withstand harsh industrial environments, making them indispensable for a wide range of industrial applications such as quality control, quality inspection, and assembly verification. By capturing images from multiple perspectives, industrial stereo depth cameras enable advanced depth sensing, providing precise data for inspection tasks and ensuring that every target object meets stringent manufacturing standards. Their ability to seamlessly integrate with existing robotic systems further enhances industrial automation, streamlining manufacturing processes and boosting overall efficiency. As a result, stereo depth cameras are rapidly becoming a cornerstone of modern machine vision, supporting high accuracy and reliability across diverse industrial applications.

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Introduction to the Industrial Stereo Depth Cameras: Advancing Vision in 3D

Industrial stereo depth cameras are transforming machine vision by delivering high-accuracy, three-dimensional images of target objects, even in the most demanding industrial environments. Unlike traditional imaging solutions, these cameras are engineered to withstand harsh industrial environments, making them indispensable for a wide range of industrial applications such as quality control, quality inspection, and assembly verification. By capturing images from multiple perspectives, industrial stereo depth cameras enable advanced depth sensing, providing precise data for inspection tasks and ensuring that every target object meets stringent manufacturing standards. Their ability to seamlessly integrate with existing robotic systems further enhances industrial automation, streamlining manufacturing processes and boosting overall efficiency. As a result, stereo depth cameras are rapidly becoming a cornerstone of modern machine vision, supporting high accuracy and reliability across diverse industrial applications.

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Introduction to the Industrial Stereo Depth Cameras:
Advancing Vision in 3D

Unlike 2D cameras which capture flat images with only vertical and horizontal information, stereo 3D cameras provide an additional dimension, the depth data. These cameras capture images from multiple viewpoints, allowing for improved spatial understanding of the scene and enabling object distance measurement and shape details measurement.

This additional depth data enables robotic technologies to perform complex operations such as navigation, manipulation, object recognition, and 3D mapping in industry, farming, traffic regulation, and many other fields.

There are several popular and well-adopted 3D imaging technologies:

• Time-of-Flight
• Laser triangulation
• Stereo Vision
• Structured light

In industrial applications, the working distance of 3D cameras is a key factor, as it determines how effectively objects at varying distances can be captured.

Each of them has its advantages and disadvantages. Stereo vision is practical, cost-effective, and works well in industrial settings. Stereo vision is similar to human vision, as both use two perspectives to perceive depth and three-dimensional structure.

Stereo Depth cameras rely on stereo vision technology, mimicking human binocular vision. Two stereo cameras set a few centimeters apart capture images obtained through two slightly different positions.

The resulting offset is used as input for calculating the depth information by using triangulation.

To refine image quality and further improve performance, most stereo depth cameras employ active sensing and include a patterned light projector to help find corresponding points on otherwise flat or featureless surfaces.

Some depth cameras, like the Intel® RealSense™ camera, also include an RGB camera sensor in order to overlay color information on the resulting depth map. For some 3D vision systems, VGA resolution is considered a benchmark for image quality, especially in Time-of-Flight cameras where achieving high spatial resolution can be challenging.

Intel® RealSense™ Stereo Depth Cameras: Unraveling the Leading Edge of 3D Imaging Technology

The Intel® RealSense™ D435

Combining powerful hardware and sophisticated algorithms that capture and process depth information with unprecedented accuracy and precision, the Intel® RealSense™ cameras stand out as the leading stereo depth 3D technology. In these systems, camera captures are used to acquire multiple images at different times, enabling the device to establish pixel correspondences and improve depth measurement accuracy.

RealSense™ cameras have found a place in many fields, such as robotics, augmented and virtual reality, autonomous driving, traffic, facial and gesture recognition, and industrial automation, to name only a few.

High-resolution imaging capabilities provide detailed depth and color data, crucial in applications such as 3D scanning, object recognition, autonomous driving, and precise measurements in manufacturing and medical fields. These cameras also offer high speed data capture and processing, supporting fast and efficient workflows in demanding environments.

User-friendly SDKs (Software Development Kits) and well-written and comprehensive documentation make their integration and implementation hassle-free. They also support easy integration with existing robotic systems, ensuring compatibility with major robot manufacturers and standard interfaces.

The data acquisition process, involving the capture of multiple images over time, is essential for achieving high accuracy in depth information.

Finally, Intel® RealSense™ cameras are cost-effective.

The Intel® RealSense™ cameras such as D415 and D435 however, are mainly aimed for consumer indoor applications and may not be well suited to industrial environments in their current version.

How 3D Vision Systems Work

3D vision systems operate by capturing images of target objects using multiple cameras or advanced structured light techniques. These images are processed to generate a detailed three-dimensional point cloud, which reveals the object’s exact shape, size, and position. This comprehensive data is crucial for a variety of industrial applications, including quality inspection, bin picking, and assembly verification. In challenging industrial environments, 3D vision systems must deliver high accuracy and maintain performance despite fluctuating ambient light and extreme temperatures. To achieve this, many systems utilize technologies such as laser triangulation and structured light, ensuring reliable operation and precise measurement. By providing accurate 3D models and enabling real-time inspection tasks, 3D vision systems play a vital role in improving product quality, reducing errors, and optimizing manufacturing processes.

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3D Camera Principles

3D cameras function by capturing images of target objects from multiple viewpoints, enabling the creation of detailed three-dimensional point clouds. This is accomplished through several key techniques, including stereo vision, structured light, and laser triangulation. In stereo vision, two cameras positioned at slightly different angles capture simultaneous images, allowing the system to calculate depth information based on the disparity between the images. Structured light methods project a specific pattern onto the object and analyze the resulting distortions to map its surface. Laser triangulation involves projecting a laser line onto the object and measuring the reflected light to determine its contours. By leveraging these principles, manufacturers can select the most appropriate 3D camera technology for their production processes, ensuring high accuracy and reliability for a wide range of industrial applications.

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FRAMOS D400e – Ruggedized RealSense™ Camera For Industrial Environments

The FRAMOS D400e stands out as a ruggedized RealSense™ camera purpose-built for the challenges of industrial environments. Engineered to endure extreme temperatures, high vibrations, and fluctuating ambient light, the D400e delivers advanced depth sensing and high-accuracy measurements for a broad range of industrial applications. Its robust construction ensures reliable operation in quality control, bin picking, and assembly verification tasks, even on the busiest production lines. The camera’s compact design and flexible integration options make it easy to deploy across various production processes, allowing manufacturers to capture detailed 3D models of target objects with confidence. By providing a dependable and precise 3D vision solution, the FRAMOS D400e helps improve product quality, reduce errors, and drive greater efficiency throughout industrial operations.

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How 3D Vision Systems Work

3D vision systems operate by capturing images of target objects using multiple cameras or advanced structured light techniques. These images are processed to generate a detailed three-dimensional point cloud, which reveals the object’s exact shape, size, and position. This comprehensive data is crucial for a variety of industrial applications, including quality inspection, bin picking, and assembly verification. In challenging industrial environments, 3D vision systems must deliver high accuracy and maintain performance despite fluctuating ambient light and extreme temperatures. To achieve this, many systems utilize technologies such as laser triangulation and structured light, ensuring reliable operation and precise measurement. By providing accurate 3D models and enabling real-time inspection tasks, 3D vision systems play a vital role in improving product quality, reducing errors, and optimizing manufacturing processes.

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3D Camera Principles

3D cameras function by capturing images of target objects from multiple viewpoints, enabling the creation of detailed three-dimensional point clouds. This is accomplished through several key techniques, including stereo vision, structured light, and laser triangulation. In stereo vision, two cameras positioned at slightly different angles capture simultaneous images, allowing the system to calculate depth information based on the disparity between the images. Structured light methods project a specific pattern onto the object and analyze the resulting distortions to map its surface. Laser triangulation involves projecting a laser line onto the object and measuring the reflected light to determine its contours. By leveraging these principles, manufacturers can select the most appropriate 3D camera technology for their production processes, ensuring high accuracy and reliability for a wide range of industrial applications.

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FRAMOS D400e – Ruggedized RealSense™ Camera For Industrial Environments

The FRAMOS D400e stands out as a ruggedized RealSense™ camera purpose-built for the challenges of industrial environments. Engineered to endure extreme temperatures, high vibrations, and fluctuating ambient light, the D400e delivers advanced depth sensing and high-accuracy measurements for a broad range of industrial applications. Its robust construction ensures reliable operation in quality control, bin picking, and assembly verification tasks, even on the busiest production lines. The camera’s compact design and flexible integration options make it easy to deploy across various production processes, allowing manufacturers to capture detailed 3D models of target objects with confidence. By providing a dependable and precise 3D vision solution, the FRAMOS D400e helps improve product quality, reduce errors, and drive greater efficiency throughout industrial operations.

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FRAMOS D400e – Ruggedized RealSense™ Camera For Industrial Environments

Dust, debris, and water jets pose significant challenges for sensitive electronic devices, potentially causing malfunctions, image distortion, or permanent damage. Reflective surfaces can also interfere with the effectiveness of 3D cameras, making it difficult to capture accurate data in some industrial settings. At the same time, the intense vibrations, cable stress, and movements require industrial-grade connectivity.

To ensure stable operation in difficult industrial environments we have developed the FRAMOS D400e camera line, ruggedized gigabit ethernet cameras combining all the imaging features of the RealSense™ camera with the ability to measure the distance to an object’s surface for accurate 3D imaging:

• Robust sealed housing providing IP66 protection (and on-demand IP67)
• Gigabit Ethernet with PoE (Power Over Ethernet)
• Locked cable connections with M12 and M8 plugs

FRAMOS D400e cameras provide RealSense™ cameras’ imaging quality while ensuring stable connectivity and resistance to dust, water jets, and other features necessary for industrial and manufacturing environments. In addition, these cameras are ideal for defect detection in quality control processes, helping to identify flaws or irregularities in products.

Advantages of the D400e Series Cameras

Here are the main benefits of the D400e cameras for industrial applications:

• An IP66-rated ruggedized enclosure guarantees reliable protection against dust, moisture, chemicals, and physical impacts. On-demand, we can provide an IP67-rated enclosure.
• GenICam GigE Vision (GigE) interface enables stable and latency-free data transmission through up to 100 meters long cables.
• Power supply can be provided through POE (POE=Power Over Ethernet), which reduces cable clutter, improving working conditions for people and robots equally.
• Robust M12 and M8 plugs allow deployment into the most harsh and demanding environments.
• FRAMOS D400e allows a multi-camera setup for better depth reconstruction. Multiple cameras can be networked together using off-the-shelf Ethernet switches and routers.
• Mounting the camera is easy due to its compact design and the mounting points on the backside.
• Supports process control by maintaining quality standards and enabling consistent product inspection during production.
• Increases efficiency in production processes by enhancing speed, reliability, and overall productivity.
• Enables robots to perform complex tasks with greater autonomy, improving both efficiency and safety.
• Can be integrated as part of a broader vision system for industrial automation.
• Supports robot vision applications for advanced automation, such as 3D perception, robotic bin picking, and inspection.

Active Stereo Vision and Structured Light Techniques in Industrial 3D Cameras

Active stereo vision and structured light techniques are at the forefront of industrial 3D camera technology, enabling the capture of high-accuracy, three-dimensional images of target objects. Active stereo vision projects a pattern onto the object and measures the resulting distortions, while structured light uses a projector to illuminate the object and analyzes the reflected light to generate detailed point clouds. Both methods are highly effective for industrial tasks such as quality inspection, assembly verification, and bin picking, providing the precision and reliability needed for demanding production processes. By leveraging these techniques, manufacturers can achieve superior product quality, streamline inventory management, and reduce labor costs. The ability to generate accurate three-dimensional images and data makes active stereo vision and structured light essential tools for modern industrial 3D applications, supporting everything from logistics to complex inspection needs.

Active Stereo Vision and Structured Light Techniques in Industrial 3D Cameras

Active stereo vision and structured light techniques are at the forefront of industrial 3D camera technology, enabling the capture of high-accuracy, three-dimensional images of target objects. Active stereo vision projects a pattern onto the object and measures the resulting distortions, while structured light uses a projector to illuminate the object and analyzes the reflected light to generate detailed point clouds. Both methods are highly effective for industrial tasks such as quality inspection, assembly verification, and bin picking, providing the precision and reliability needed for demanding production processes. By leveraging these techniques, manufacturers can achieve superior product quality, streamline inventory management, and reduce labor costs. The ability to generate accurate three-dimensional images and data makes active stereo vision and structured light essential tools for modern industrial 3D applications, supporting everything from logistics to complex inspection needs.

Stereo Depth Cameras Applications

RealSense™ D400 Stereo Vision technology is a well-recognized 3D imaging solution. It is used in various industrial environments, from smart agriculture to automotive manufacturing, as a part of different automated processes. On the production line, stereo depth cameras are integrated for quality inspection, part alignment, and assembly, helping to ensure proper assembly of components and improve product quality. In manufacturing, 3D vision systems enable robotic applications such as machine tending, where robots use cameras to load, unload, and manipulate parts efficiently. The logistics industry is another key sector, using 3D vision systems for automation and inspection tasks like container fill measurement and damage detection.

Here are a few interesting use cases from our clients.

Materials Handling

One of the most challenging problems in material handling involves robots working with heavy equipment and machinery, often in close proximity to human workers, which introduces severe risk and raises many safety concerns.

In warehouses, numerous industrial trucks and forklifts move rapidly back and forth between workers and pallets, bringing a great risk of collisions and dangers for humans. Another burden to the already complex situation is that drivers are often inexperienced and work under intense time pressure.

To improve warehouse safety, Xesol Industrial Vehicles developed Drivox® Security – a safety system for industrial vehicles that detects pedestrians and objects in the front and rear of the vehicle to prevent collisions.

The system is based on two FRAMOS industrial GigE depth cameras, D435e, fitted at the front and rear of the vehicle for three-dimensional perception, a microprocessor unit for AI-based image analysis, and a display serving as a monitor for the driver, intuitively showing him the calculation results.

Consistent and reliable real-time depth perception provides real-time inputs allowing vehicles to detect and avoid humans and other obstacles accurately.

This technology significantly reduced the risk of accidents in warehouses, ensuring safety for the people and efficient operations. Read the case study on this link.

Smart Agriculture

FRAMOS D400e cameras are used for three agricultural operations:

• Plant growth and health monitoring
• Navigating vehicles on the farm
• Harvesting

When combined with 2D RGB or NIR imaging, depth data contributes to agriculture productivity and sustainability on multiple levels.

It helps reduce pesticide usage, improves guiding machinery while avoiding obstacles like plants, and allows automated picking machines to assess a fruit’s ripeness for efficient harvesting accurately.

For more information, check our whitepaper out using FRAMOS D400e in agriculture.

Robotics and Automation

Depth cameras are essential in robotics and automation for object detection, obstacle avoidance, autonomous navigation, pick-and-place operations, human-robot interaction, and various other applications.

A great use case in this market segment is the implementation of Autonomous Ground Vehicles (AGV) tractors in agriculture to enhance both the safety of the people in the greenhouse and operation efficiency.

Cyberworks Robotics collaborated with their client, Fernlea Flower, to develop self-driving tug tractors for their greenhouses.

Using stereo vision technology, they retrofitted existing vehicles and developed a cloud-based fleet management.

That allows operators to track and control each vehicle in the fleet remotely, optimizing logistical operations and increasing daily order fulfillment while increasing safety and reducing labor costs.

Read the case study here.

Automotive Manufacturing

Automotive manufacturing demands precision and speed in tasks such as bin picking and palletization in automotive assembly lines.

By utilizing the D400e Cameras, BMW created robots that can accurately identify and pick components from bins and place them precisely onto pallets.

The cameras’ high-resolution depth sensing enables robots to adapt to varying part geometries and sizes, making the process seamless and efficient.

Learn more about stereo vision, D400e Industrial Depth Cameras and other 3D technologies

Designed to perform in harsh industrial settings, FRAMOS D400e Industrial Depth camera comes with a ruggedized IP66-rated enclosure protecting against dust, water jets, chemicals, and impacts.

The GigE Interface ensures stable and latency-free data transmission up to 100 meters (about 328.08 ft) while robust IP67-rated M12 and M8 connectors safeguard the connection.

Power of Ethernet (PoE) technology can also reduce cable clutter by supplying the power to the camera on the same cable that carries the data.

The combination of highly sophisticated Intel®’s RealSense™ vision technology and ruggedized housing, robust connectivity, and GigE interface have proved to be a winning combination in factories, greenhouses, and warehouses worldwide.

Read more about depth cameras and other 3D technologies such as Structured Light, Stereo Vision, LiDAR, dToF and iToF.

Please follow this link for detailed information about our depth-sensing products and services.

Intel, the Intel logo, and Intel RealSense are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries.