Student Projects 2014-2015

The article presents a list of projects developed for the course of 2D Vision Systems during the year 2014-2015.

The first project was developed by Simone Formichella, with the aim of developing a small vision system to detect objects on a rotating table using a NI1764 smart camera.

One of the problems the student faced was how to detect reflective objects with optical sensors and how to deal with the transparency of the rotating plate. Moreover, the smart camera was able to perform only lightweight elaborations, so the system had to be splitted between camera and the host PC, which was able to perform the more computational heavy processing required. The whole system was developed using LabView.

The second project was developed by Alessandro Nastro, with the aim of using a very low cost projector to project fringes for 3D reconstruction. 

The student created a triangulation system with two Basler Scout scA1390 cameras and a low cost projector (Philips PicoPix PPX22505). The student dealt with the camera 2D calibration performed by a custom made VI developed in LabView in order to correctly detect the fringes projected on the image and retrieve the period between them. In this way it is possibile to perform a 3D reconstruction of an object!

The third project was developed by Pietro Craighero with the aim of measuring the inner and the outer radius of a mechanical object using telecentric lenses.

Telecentric lenses allow users to obtain images with high contrast with almost no image distorsion, thus being a fundamental piece of any high accuracy vision system. The student created a small set-up with a red-light laser and a telecentric camera, used to acquire 2D images of the object to be measured. The software used for the project was developed in LabView.

3D vision for the measurement of eccentricity of pipes

The aim of this project has been to design, to implement and to characterize a system for the 3D measurement of eccentricity of pipes.

This system was originally based on four laser slits, suitable oriented with respect to the pipe to acquire the external and the internal semi-profiles. In order to develop a compact version of the instrument, we studied a new optical layout, which halves the number of the cameras.

Related Publications

Sansoni, G.; Bellandi, P.; Docchio, F. “Design and development of a 3D system for the measurement of tube eccentricity“, Measurement Science and Technology, Vol. 22, no. 7. 2011

Sansoni, G.; Bellandi, P.; Docchio, F. “3D system for the measurement of tube eccentricity: an improved, rugged, easy to calibrate layout“, Measurement Science and Technology, Vol. 24, no. 3. 2013

The Robo3DScan Project

Recently, the integration of vision with robots has gained considerable attention from industry. Pick and place, sorting, assembling, cutting and welding processes are examples of applications which can have great advantage from the combination of information from 3D images with robot motion.

Our laboratory developed, in collaboration with DENSO EUROPE B. V., a system integrating 3D vision into robotic cells. The project led to the Roboscan system.

Roboscan is a Robot cell that combines 2D and 3D vision in a simple device, to aid a Robot manipulator in pick-and-place operations in a fast and accurate way. The optical head of Roboscan combines the two vision systems: the camera is used “stand-alone” in the 2D system, and combined to a laser slit projector in the 3D system, which operates in the triangulation mode. The 2D system, using suitable libraries, provides the preliminary 2D information to the 3D system to perform in a very fast, flexible and robust way the point cloud segmentation and fitting. The most innovative part of the system is represented by the use of robust 2D geometric template matching as a means to classify 3D objects. In this way, we avoid time-consuming 3D point cloud segmentation and 3D object classification, using 3D data only for estimating pose and orientation of the robot gripper. In addition, a novel approach to the template definition in the 2D geometric template matching is proposed, where the influence of surface reflectance and colour of the objects over the definition of the template geometry is minimized.

Related Publications

Bellandi, P.; Docchio, F.; Sansoni, G. “Roboscan: a combined 2D and 3D vision system for improved speed and flexibility in pick-and-place operation“, The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Vol. 69, no. 5–8, pp. 1873–1886. 2013