Tilted Optics in 3D Vision Inspection Systems - Case Study

In real vision applications, the object plane may not be parallel to the image plane and may lead to some parts of the field of view (FOV) being out of focus, such that the whole object may not be rendered sharply. By tilting optics based on the Scheimpflug principle, it is expected that the entire FOV can be focused to achieve better image quality in real world applications. In this paper, we propose two schemes to tilt optics: one is achieved by tilting the lens, and the other by tilting the sensor, to get a better focus and better image quality for a practical stereo vision system. The approach in nature and applicable to the design of any vision system with tilted optics. The experimental results show that the proposed tilted optics configuration achieves better image quality and measurement accuracy as compared to the standard non-tilted optics configuration.