Image acquisition system
First Claim
1. A system for transmitting images to a machine vision system having a host processor that allocates memory for storage of said images acquired by said system, said system comprising:
- image acquisition means of a machine vision system including a photo-sensitive element, the photo-sensitive element responsive to at least one trigger signal asserted by external components located separately from the image acquisition means for beginning acquisition of one or more of said images in response to the at least one trigger signal,host memory means for storing data representative of a portion of one or more of said images, andimage transfer means for controlling transfer of one or more of said images from said image acquisition means to said host memory means,said image transfer means having buffer memory associated with one or more data path levels for transferring a plurality of said images pending at least allocation of memory space in said host memory means by the host processor for portions of said images,wherein said image acquisition means operates substantially independently of the allocation of the memory space by the host processor to acquire the plurality of the images at any time relative to the allocation of the memory space in said host memory means.
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Abstract
An image acquisition system for machine vision systems decouples image acquisition from the transmission of the image to a host processor by using a programmable imager controller to selectively disable and enable the transmission of data to the host and by using a system of buffers to temporarily store image data pending allocation of memory. This enables the image acquisition system to acquire images asynchronously and to change the exposure parameters on a frame-by-frame basis without the latency associated with the allocation of memory for storage of the acquired image. The system architecture of the invention further permits interruption and resumption of image acquisition with minimal likelihood of missing data. Data throughput is further enhanced by transmitting to the host only that data corresponding to the region of interest within the image and discarding the data from outside of the region of interest at the camera stage.
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Citations
31 Claims
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1. A system for transmitting images to a machine vision system having a host processor that allocates memory for storage of said images acquired by said system, said system comprising:
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image acquisition means of a machine vision system including a photo-sensitive element, the photo-sensitive element responsive to at least one trigger signal asserted by external components located separately from the image acquisition means for beginning acquisition of one or more of said images in response to the at least one trigger signal, host memory means for storing data representative of a portion of one or more of said images, and image transfer means for controlling transfer of one or more of said images from said image acquisition means to said host memory means, said image transfer means having buffer memory associated with one or more data path levels for transferring a plurality of said images pending at least allocation of memory space in said host memory means by the host processor for portions of said images, wherein said image acquisition means operates substantially independently of the allocation of the memory space by the host processor to acquire the plurality of the images at any time relative to the allocation of the memory space in said host memory means. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31)
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Specification