Before discussing the trends, let’s lay some groundwork by discussing the market drivers for machine vision that ultimately power the trends.

As technology scales down and the trend towards miniaturization accelerates, how does it affect the design and application of these critical lenses?

Machine vision enables new and exciting advancements in industries and fields of research across multiple disciplines. 

The discipline of machine vision encompasses imaging technologies and methods to perform automatic inspection and analysis in various applications, such as verification, measurement, and process control.

Lenses play a crucial role in the quality of the images produced by a machine vision system since they determine the sharpness of the image on the camera sensor. Lenses can influence image quality in a variety of ways.

Imaging sensors in the machine vision space have traditionally fit into cameras utilizing only a couple of different camera mounts. However, newer sensors are beginning to grow far too large. Lens and camera manufacturers need to collaborate to develop new mounting standards for the new, large sensor formats.

Imaging lenses are critically important components for systems deployed in all types of environments such as factory automation, robotics, and industrial inspection.

You’ve learned about light sources, lenses, cameras, camera interfaces, and image processing software. Now, you may be wondering exactly how to design and implement a complete, successful machine vision system. 

Imaging and machine vision are becoming more integrated into our daily lives. From autonomous vehicles to advanced medical diagnostics, camera and lens systems are now commonplace.

Laser Components USA manufactures high-quality custom quartz glass lenses within a very short time. At the production site in Olching, Germany, substrates with diameters from 0.5 to 2 inches can be shaped into plano-convex, plano-concave, biconvex, biconcave, and meniscus lenses with radii of curvature from 12 mm to 15,000 mm.