Motorized and Calibrated Lenses for Machine Vision Applications

Watch Mark Peterson, Co-founder & VP Advanced Technology at Theia Technologies present at Photonics Media's Vision Spectra Conference 2023. Many applications have benefited from motorized varifocal lenses that allow automatic or remote adjustment of focus distance and field of view. Applications may need to change the focal length or object focus distance on the fly to maintain a sharp image. Or access to the lens may be restricted by an environmental housing or other external factors. A lens that offers remote or automatic adjustment of focus and focal length can be a benefit. However, with this added flexibility there are some challenges. Variation in manufacturing and tolerances lead to slight and sometimes significant differences from lens to lens. For these variables, the lenses can be calibrated, and the calibration data can be used to improve the performance and speed of using the lens. Peterson highlights calibrated lenses that are individually characterized and calibrated to provide a rich array of data sets depending on the lens features, including focal length, f-number, focus/zoom motor positional relationship, as well as custom calibrations.