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Mobile phone or industrial camera?
Why the camera of a mobile phone is not sufficient for machine vision
From quality control in industry to autonomous navigation of self-driving cars, machine vision is used in a wide variety of applications to automatically analyse, inspect and measure objects.
At the same time, as cameras in mobile phones are getting better and better, we are often confronted with the idea of using mobile phones for inspection tasks as well. However, when it comes to machine vision, there are several reasons why a mobile phone is not sufficient for industrial applications.
Sure, developments in mobile phones are rapid and there are new phones with even higher resolution sensors every year, but it often takes years before these are available in the much smaller machine vision market. Also, the development of a machine often takes several years and by the time the system is ready for the market, the mobile phone used is obsolete. But availability is not the only problem; a number of other factors work against the use of mobile phones in machine vision.
Proper illumination is essential for machine vision applications because the amount and quality of light has a massive impact on the accuracy of the results obtained by machine vision systems.
For example, if an object appears too dark or too bright due to inadequate lighting, it is usually not possible to accurately recognise the object's features or accurately measure its size or position.
Importance of a repeatable and robust set-up
A reproducible, robust setup is essential for vision applications. The environment in which the vision system operates must be consistent and reliable in order to produce meaningful results.
Using a mobile phone as part of a vision system is therefore extremely challenging, especially when it comes to achieving repeatable and resilient results. Since mobile phones are sensitive to their environment and can be easily affected by changes in temperature, humidity and other external factors, a robust test system setup is impossible. In addition, mobile phones can be easily moved or shifted due to their size and weight, further complicating the setup of a repeatable and robust testing scenario.
The fact that a mobile phone is guided by "hand" directly to the defect and held in different directions until a good contrast of the defect is obtained before a high-resolution image is taken where the defect is almost image-filling, produces a great snapshot, but makes a reproducible set-up impossible and is not applicable even for slower production processes.
Inspecting moving objects
Mobile phone cameras are exclusively equipped with rolling shutter sensors. However, unless these sensors are specifically flashed, they are generally not suitable for measuring tasks when objects move quickly, because the recording times between the first and last line are different. In machine vision, global shutter sensors are used for this purpose, which are not available in mobile phones.
Depending on the size of an object or the field of view, different focal lengths and lenses are needed in vision applications. For example, if you want to inspect a large object, you need a smaller focal length to capture it in its entirety. On the other hand, if you are working with a small object, you need a larger focal length and a macro lens to see small details on the parts you are inspecting.
Since most mobile phones only have a fixed focal length, this limits the applications considerably. And even if you manage to attach different lenses to your mobile phone, there is no guarantee that they will work properly as they may not be compatible with the phone's camera sensor.
Long-term availability
Industrial machine vision solutions must be stable and the components used should be easily replaceable even years later. This is impossible with mobile phone-based solutions, because a mobile phone bought today is quickly obsolete.
Conclusion
Probably the most important distinguishing criterion is the fact that industrial cameras and consumer cameras are designed for completely different purposes and should be used as such. With mobile phone cameras, it is important that the images look perfect to the human eye and a lot of effort is put into post-processing so that edges, contrasts and colours look as realistic as possible to the viewer. With industrial cameras, on the other hand, the image often appears "dull" to the viewer but is ideal for measurements.