A Challenge for CCDs

Dr. Christine Connolly, Contributing Editor

CMOS sensors have been available for about a decade, but only since about 1997 has the machine vision community brought them into more general use.

The principal advantage of CMOS sensors over CCDs, according to Brendan Ruff, technical director of Modular Vision Ltd., is the direct accessibility of the pixel data and simple electronic interfacing. These factors reduce the chip count of a complete vision system, which leads to compact devices with significant cost savings…