Ultrafast 2K line-scan sensor for industrial inspection applications

Abstract

Optical inspection systems require fast image acquisition at significantly enhanced resolution when utilized for advanced machine vision tasks. Examples are quality assurance in print inspection, printed circuit board inspection, wafer inspection, real-time surveillance of railroad tracks, and in-line monitoring in flat panel fabrication lines. Ultra-highspeed is an often demanded feature in modern industrial production facilities, especially, where it comes to high volume production. A novel technology in this context is the new high-speed sensor for line-scan camera applications with unmatched line rates up to 200 kHz (tri-linear RGB) and 600 kHz (b/w), presented in this paper. At this speed, the multiline- scan sensor provides full color images with, e.g., a spatial resolution of 50 μm at a transport speed of 10 m/s. In contrast to conventional Bayer pattern or three-chip approaches, the sensor presented here utilizes the tri-linear principle, where the color filters are organized line-wise on the chip. With almost 100% fill-factor, the tri-linear technology assures high image quality because of its robustness against aliasing and Moire effects leading to improved inspection quality, less false positives and thus less waste in the production lines.