3D Machine Vision

One of the more recent developments in machine vision is the widely commercial availability of algorithms and software tools that can process and measure pixels in the third dimension. The most common applications work in 2 dimensions, X and Y. In the real world this translates to the accurate location of an object within the image - or the actual position of a product on a conveyor belt for example. In a manufacturing environment this works very well well when the product type and size is known - as when the height of the product is a fixed value - as long as the product outline can be recognised and measured, the height is assumed