3D cameras
Sick and Microsoft cooperate on 3DToF
Together with Microsoft, Sick wants to drive forward the development of commercial industrial 3D cameras and related solutions. These are compatible with a Microsoft ecosystem based on the Microsoft Depth, Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge platforms.
Industrial cameras based on technologies such as active and passive stereoscopy and 3D time-of-flight (3DToF) have been part of Sick's standard portfolio for almost five years. Users utilize the so-called '3D snapshot' cameras to capture distance images and the information that can be derived from them.
With its intelligent depth technology, which is currently offered as part of the mixed reality device 'Hololens' and the 'Azure Kinect' development kit, Microsoft has know-how and expertise in the field of 3D ToF measurement.
Sick and Microsoft now want to jointly further develop 3DToF technologies in the context of Industry 4.0 and apply them to Sick's 'Visionary-T' 3DToF cameras to make them smarter using Azure Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge. The 3DToF camera 'Visionary-T Mini' is expected to be available for industrial applications in early 2021; prototypes are already available. The camera includes another variant of Microsoft's 3DToF technology with a dynamic bandwidth and a resolution of around 510 x 420 pixels.
The 3DToF technology
3DToF is the measurement of the time of flight of a light signal between the camera and the target scene simultaneously for each pixel. As soon as the arrival time or the phase shift of the reflected light is known, the distance to the object can be determined and a distance image created. The '3D snapshot' technology can even capture motionless scenes in three dimensions using time-of-flight measurement without the need to move actuators or mechanical parts within the camera.










