Three-Dimensional Photography Using a Single Digital Camera in an Automated Material-Handling Facility

Three-dimensional vision and photography has been used in many disciplines for a long time. However, modern technological developments and increasing levels of industrial automation are making increasing demands for the development and implementation of new, innovative support systems for, inter alia, quality assurance and component identification purposes. Three-dimensional photography is often the preferred way of addressing this need. The system as described represents an experimental photographic system for the acquisition of three-dimensional images of components moving along a conveyor belt system as part of an automated material-handling system in a pseudo-industrial environment. The photographic system consists of only one digital camera and a scanning laser beam. Preliminary results indicate that fairly accurate images can be acquired using such a system, whilst good rendering can result from careful manipulation of the data of photographed components.