Infrared Vision
What have you learned about Infrared vision in your research? Short Wave InfraRed, also known as SWIR, is more often than not referring to the wavelength band of light that sits between 900nm and 2500nm. Unlike Long-Wave Infrared (LWIR) light, SWIR light is similar to visible light in that photons are reflected or absorbed by an object, giving you the strongest contrast possible, which you really need for high resolution imaging. You will not receive HD imaging with LWIR.
Short Wave InfraRed Imagers
We can use SWIR in an unlimited about of applications and they continue to grow with technology. When it comes to these applications, it may be including silicon inspection, laser beam profiling, hyperspectral imaging, chemical and plastics sensing, machine vision imaging, agricultural sensing, surveillance systems, and medical imaging. They give you the ability to see those super minute defects that you just can’t catch otherwise, and in some circumstances that’s the difference between life and death. They are also intended for use in mobile phone facial recognition sensors, and autonomous vehicle imaging though obscured environments. Over time more and more applications will appear for these SWIR imagers.
SWIR and Machine Vision Imaging
Machine vision imaging continues to be a top hit for SWIR. Machine vision imaging necessitates cameras that can see the absolute smallest defects, see that at extremely fast frame rates, and a field of view wide enough to image a large area. SWIR cameras are compliant with the main vision software programs you’ll find out there. Manufacturing anything always has some unknown and risk to it. The manufacturing process involves so many steps that there’s always a chance for something to wrong and lead to you putting out some undesirable product. The very last thing you as a business want to do is deliver an inferior product to the customer. If you do not have perfect imaging available, what is the use?
NIR Cameras
Do you know what Near-Infrared is?. It is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum directly adjacent to the visible range, meaning it is not visible to the human eye. NIR-optimized industrial cameras are popular for applications that need to utilize this wavelength range, mainly applications with poor light conditions, such as traffic monitoring or even security. Before this, these applications were only possible with infrared cameras with expensive CCD sensors that were unattainable by many. Some application fields and inspection solutions require NIR for high wavelengths as well as for normal lighting, to record high-contrast images. Standard industrial cameras quickly reach their limits in that particular scenario, since they require very great lighting to get useable images. A Machine Vision Camera System should only use SWIR.