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that a user has to solve some compatibility problems 
between camera and storage device. Some manufacturers 
offer complete systems, which are often tailored for special 
requirements. Basically those systems can be subdivided 
into systems for use on the factory floor and systems 
mainly designed for digital image processing purposes. 
Factory floor systems are often being employed for the 
examination of assembly line problems which occur too 
shortly in time for human perception. Their main purpose is 
the recording of events with imaging rates of typically 500 
- 1000 images per second and a play back in a slow motion 
or image by image mode for visual interpretation by a 
human observer. These systems are usually delivered as 
simple-to-use turnkey systems, but they are somewhat 
restricted for the use in machine vision or scientific appli- 
cations due to their lack of flexibility and bottlenecks in the 
transfer of digital image data to computer systems. For such 
applications computer based systems with direct access to 
digital images will often be the better solution. 
In the following some typical high-speed systems and a 
(not realized) own scheme will be presented showing the 
potential and limitations of high-speed solid state sensor 
systems. The classification of systems into different catego- 
ries is sometimes floating. The study does not claim to be 
complete, and technical details and performance data may 
change quite rapidly. Due to the politics of manufacturers 
and distributers in different countries and due to the fact 
that many systems are specially compiled for customers 
needs prices will not be given. 
1. “Factory floor" systems 
Factory floor systems are usually complete systems consist- 
ing of a camera, storage device, monitor and control panel 
mounted on a rack which easily can be moved to sections 
of assembly lines where disturbances occur in fast produc- 
tion processes. The basic task of the systems is the record- 
ing of fast events and a slow motion playback at the 
location of use immediately after recording in order to find 
causes of trouble and to be able to remove them interac- 
tively. The extremely high costs of production line stops 
will often justify the high investment for such systems. 
The probably best known factory floor system is the Kodak 
Ektapro 1000 (Figure 1). It consists of a camera with a 
black and white solid state sensor (NMOS) with a resolu- 
tion of 192 x 240 pixels. The imaging rate is 1000 images 
per second at full resolution and can be increased up to 
6000 images per second by skipping lines and reading only 
every sixth sensor line, which reduces the spatial resolution 
to 32 x 240 pixels. The camera can be shuttered with a 10 
us shutter to freeze fast motions or synchronized with a 
strobelight. An intensified version is also available, and the 
processor is able to mix data from two cameras at reduced 
spatial resolution. Kodak offers two options for image stor- 
age: The analog version is a videorecorder with two video- 
heads and 19 read and write tracks each and special 
videotapes with a storage capacity of 40 seconds; for the 
pause mode a digital memory for 8 images is available, 
which can be read out via a GPIB interface. For cheap data 
archiving there is the possibility of a download to standard 
video cassettes. 
  
Figure 1: Kodak Ektapro 1000 
As an alternative Kodak offers the Ektapro 1000 with a 
dynamic RAM memory Ektapro EM (Hyzer, 1990), which 
has got a storage capacity of up to 4800 images. Extensive 
trigger possibilities allow the capture of intermittently 
occuring random problems detected by various kinds of 
sensors. The dynamic RAM can be formatted arbitrarily, 
images can be stored at any depth (e.g. 9600 images of 4 bit 
depth instead of 4800 images of 8 bit depth); download on 
standard video cassettes and computer interfacing via GPIB 
are also possible. 
A system with very high (analog) data rate is the NAC 
HSV 1000. The system is based on a 2/3" MOS colour sen- 
sor and delivers 500 images per second at full vertical reso- 
lution of 262 lines with a horizontal resolution of 350 line 
pairs at centre (black and white, S- VHS) or 240 line pairs at 
centre (colour, VHS) or 1000 images per second at a 
reduced vertical resolution of 131 lines. The analog data is 
stored on standard S-VHS video cassettes in a special for- 
mat which allows the storage of 10 minutes of image data 
on one video cassette. Like it's predecessor NAC HSV 400 
(three-tube colour camera with 400 images per second) the 
HSV 1000 offers colour images, but at a relatively poor 
quality because it is equipped with only one sensor. A com- 
puter interface does not exist so that images can only be 
digitized from a playback on a videorecorder. Thus the 
NAC system seems not very suited for any task requiring 
digital image processing. 
2. Computer-based systems 
Some manufacturers offer complete systems consisting of a 
high-speed camera and a computer board with camera con- 
trol and RAM chips for image sequence storage, which are 
better suited for users in machine vision or scientists who 
need direct access to digital images.