Range finding are widely used in various industrial applications, such as machine vision, collision avoidance, and robotics. Presently most range finders either rely on active transmitters or sophisticated mechanical controllers and powerful processors to extract range information, which make the range finders costly, bulky, or slowly, and limit their applications. This dissertation is a detailed description of a real-time vision-based range sensing technique and its single-chip CMOS implementation. To the best of our knowledge, this system is the first single chip vision-based range finder that doesn't need any mechanical position adjustment, memory or digital processor. The entire signal processing on the chip is purely analog and occurs in parallel. The chip captures the image of an object and extracts the depth and range information from just a single picture. The on-chip, continuous-time, logarithmic photoreceptor circuits are used to couple spatial image signals into the range-extracting processing network. The photoreceptor pixels can adjust their operating regions, simultaneously achieving high sensitivity and wide dynamic range. The image sharpness processor and Winner-Take-All circuits are characterized and analyzed carefully for their temporal bandwidth and detection performance. The mathematical and optical models of the system are built and carefully verified. A prototype based on this technique has been fabricated and tested. The experimental results prove that the range finder can achieve acceptable range sensing precision with low cost and excellent speed performance in short-to-medium range coverage. Therefore, it is particularly useful for collision avoidance.

Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensors are commonly used in optical alignment, ophthalmology, astronomy, adaptive optics and commercial optical testing. Wavefront error measurement yields Zernike polynomials which provide useful data for alignment correction calculations. In this thesis a practical alignment method of a helmet visor is proposed based on the wavefront error measurements. The optical system is modeled in Zemax software in order to collect the Zernike polynomial data necessary to relate the error measurements to the positioning of the visor. An artificial neural network based computer program is designed and trained with the data obtained from Zernike simulation in Zemax software and then the program is able to find how to invert the misalignments in the system. The performance of this alignment correction method is compared with the optical test setup measurements.

In order to understand the effects of structurally induced line of sight (SILOS) jitter (vibration) and to predict its effects on optical system performance, a simple and practical vibratory model and software are developed by using discrete and finite element modeling techniques. For an existing simple optical system, discrete and FE dynamic models are constructed and they are validated by modal tests for the frequency range of interest. In order to find material properties of adhesive, which is used in optical system, a simple test is constructed and these properties are found by using a single degree of freedom model. The effects of vibration on the system performance are investigated under random vibration load conditions by using the software developed. It is concluded that the analytical model suggested can successfully be used in preliminary design stage of a simple optical system when the optical housing and lens behave rigidly in the frequency range of interest. The optical performance prediction software combines the optical element tolerances and displacements in order to determine the optical performance.

Abstract ¡@¡@The motion when two parting in machine into contact can combine squeeze and sliding motion. This situation does occur for example in the meshing of gear teeth and in heavily loaded rolling elements bearing etc. In this study, the experiment is used to investigate the microscopic mechanism of the oil film under the combined squeeze and sliding motion. ¡@¡@The laser optical system is employed in the starting friction tester to measure the film thickness accurately by the principle of optical interferometry. High-speed video camera with the microscope records the dynamic characteristics of lubrication in the diminutive contact region. ¡@¡@Results show that the dimple becomes deeper with increasing squeeze velocity. When sliding velocity increases, the duration of dimple becomes shorter, but when the squeeze load increases, the dimple can keep longer. Furthermore, the dimple diameter increases with increasing the curvature radius of steel ball at the same experiment condition.

Range finding are widely used in various industrial applications, such as machine vision, collision avoidance, and robotics. Presently most range finders either rely on active transmitters or sophisticated mechanical controllers and powerful processors to extract range information, which make the range finders costly, bulky, or slowly, and limit their applications. This dissertation is a detailed description of a real-time vision-based range sensing technique and its single-chip CMOS implementation. To the best of our knowledge, this system is the first single chip vision-based range finder that doesn't need any mechanical position adjustment, memory or digital processor. The entire signal processing on the chip is purely analog and occurs in parallel. The chip captures the image of an object and extracts the depth and range information from just a single picture. The on-chip, continuous-time, logarithmic photoreceptor circuits are used to couple spatial image signals into the range-extracting processing network. The photoreceptor pixels can adjust their operating regions, simultaneously achieving high sensitivity and wide dynamic range. The image sharpness processor and Winner-Take-All circuits are characterized and analyzed carefully for their temporal bandwidth and detection performance. The mathematical and optical models of the system are built and carefully verified. A prototype based on this technique has been fabricated and tested. The experimental results prove that the range finder can achieve acceptable range sensing precision with low cost and excellent speed performance in short-to-medium range coverage. Therefore, it is particularly useful for collision avoidance.

Laparoscopic surgery or minimally invasive surgery has great advantages compared with the conventional open surgery, such as reduced pain, shorter recovery time and lower infection rate. It has become a standard clinical procedure for cholecystectomy, appendectomy and splenectomy. The state-of-the-art laparoscopic technologies suffer from several significant limitations, one of which is the tradeoff of the limited instantaneous field of view (FOV) for high spatial resolution versus the wide FOV for situational awareness but with diminished spatial resolution. Standard laparoscopes lack the ability to acquire both wide-angle and high-resolution images simultaneously through a single scope. During the surgery, a trained assistant is required to manipulate the laparoscope. The practice of frequently maneuvering the laparoscope by a trained assistant can lead to poor or awkward ergonomic scenarios. This type of ergonomic conflicts imposes inherent challenges to laparoscopic procedures, and it is further aggravated with the introduction of single port access (SPA) techniques to laparoscopic surgery. SPA uses one combined surgical port for all instruments instead of using multiple ports in the abdominal wall. The grouping of ports raises a number of challenges, including the tunnel vision due to the in-line arrangement of instruments, poor triangulation of instruments, and the instrument collision due to the close proximity to other surgical devices. A multi-resolution foveated laparoscope (MRFL) was proposed to address those limitations of the current laparoscopic surgery. The MRFL is able to simultaneously capture a wide-angle view for situational awareness and a high-resolution zoomed-in view for fine details. The high-resolution view can be scanned and registered anywhere within the wide-angle view, enabled by a 2D optical scanning mechanism. In addition, the high-resolution probe has optical zoom and autofocus capabilities, so that the field coverage can be dynamically varied while keep the same focus distance as the wide-angle probe. Moreover, the MRFL has a large working distance compared with the standard laparoscopes, the wide-angle probe has more than 8x field coverage than a standard laparoscope. On the other hand, the high-resolution probe has 3x spatial resolution than a standard one. These versatile capabilities are anticipated to have significant impacts on the diagnostic, clinical and technical aspects of minimally invasive surgery. In this dissertation, the development of the multi-resolution foveated laparoscope was discussed in detail. Starting from the refinement of the 1st order specifications, system configurations, and initial prototype demonstration, a customized dual-view MRFL system with fixed optical magnifications was developed and demonstrated. After the in-vivo test of the first generation prototype of the MRFL, further improvement was made on the high-resolution probe by adding an optical zoom and auto-focusing capability. The optical design, implementation and experimental validation of the MRFL prototypes were presented and discussed in detail.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo apresentar o sistema óptico desenvolvido para a câmera WFI (Wide Field Imaging Camera) que integrará os satélites CBERS 3 e 4 (China Brazil Earth Resources Satellite). O Brasil é responsável por duas das câmeras dos satélites CBERS 3 e 4, a WFI e a MUX (Multispectral Camera). Estas câmeras são destinadas a sensoriamento remoto orbital da Terra. É a primeira vez que câmeras destinadas a este tipo de aplicação são inteiramente desenvolvidas e construídas no país. Devido ao alto nível de vibração durante o vôo, à exposição a vácuo e a radiação espacial durante o período de vida útil em órbita, o desenvolvimento desta câmera exige um cuidadoso processo de análise e avaliação do desempenho óptico em terra de modo a garantir seu funcionamento a bordo. Em especial, serão apresentados as análises ópticas realizadas durante a fase de projeto preliminar e os testes ópticos realizados em terra dos requisitos: distância focal, campo de visada - FOV, função de transferência de modulação - MTF, distorção, sensibilidade à polarização, transmitância, sensibilidade à luz espalhada e degradação da transmitância com a radiação espacial. Os resultados obtidos comprovaram que o desempenho do sistema óptico atende os requisitos de projeto. / The purpose of this work is to present the optical system developed for the WFI camera (Wide Field Imaging Camera), which will be integrated to the CBERS 3 and 4 satellites (China Brazil Earth Resources Satellite). Brazil is responsible for two cameras of CBERS 3 and 4 satellites, WFI and MUX (Multispectral Camera). These cameras are used for orbital remote sensing of the Earth. It is the first time that cameras for this type of application are being entirely developed and built in our country. Due to the high vibration level during flight, the vacuum and space radiation exposure during the lifetime in orbit, the development of this camera requires a meticulous analysis process and evaluation of optical performance on the ground in order to ensure the effective operation on board. In particular, the optical analyses performed during the preliminary design and optical test requirements performed on ground will be presented, such as: focal length, field of view - FOV, modulation transfer function - MTF, distortion, polarization sensitivity, transmittance, stray light sensitivity and transmittance degradation with space radiation. The results obtained exhibit that the optical system performance satisfies all project requirements.

Depuis plusieurs années, les détecteurs courbes ont été proposés comme étant une nouvelle approche pour améliorer les performances des caméras. En courbant les détecteurs, une des aberrations optiques, la courbure de champ, peut en effet être annulée, ce qui permet d’avoir une meilleure résolution ou d’utiliser moins de lentilles pour une même qualité d’image.Ce travail de thèse propose d’étudier cette approche, en essayant de prendre en compte les aspects mécaniques, optiques et technologiques du système final. Tout d’abord, le lien entre la scène et la courbure des capteurs est théorisé. Ainsi, la position et la forme de l’objet par rapport au système optique influent sur la valeur de courbure du capteur optimale. Une forte compacité est permise pour les systèmes optiques possédant cette courbure. Ces études théoriques permettent de créer une nouvelle méthodologie de conception optique. Celle-ci débute par la détermination des limites mécaniques du capteur, pouvant casser lorsque la courbure est élevée. Intégrant ces limites et les changements théoriques observés, une architecture optique est choisie, donnant de hautes performances en compacité, résolution et champ de vue. De nouvelles tolérances sont établies pour la courbure. Ce système est ensuite fabriqué pour être caractérisé. La forme des montre un léger écart à la sphère. La courbure n’a pas d’impact significatif sur les performances électro-optiques des détecteurs. La qualité de l’image caractérisée est perturbée par des tilts ou décentrements probables. Enfin une caractérisation utilisant un capteur plan et l’optique imageant sur une surface courbe permet d’obtenir des informations sur la courbure idéale / In the past few years, curved sensors have been proposed to enhance optical systems. The curvature of these sensors improves off-axis aberrations, such as field curvature, which provides a better resolution and less complex optical systems.This work studies deformable and curved sensors development in a multidisciplinary approach. Firstly, scene and curved sensors are theoretically linked. The form and the position of the object change the curvature of the best image plane, leading to new relations adapted to optical systems with deformable sensors. Gains in compactness are also demonstrated. These investigations merge into a new methodology adapted to optical systems based on curved sensors that has been developed. The first step is to determine mechanical limits of the sensor such as maximum bending without breakage. Based on these limits, a new compact architecture is developed, providing high resolution and good field of view. New tolerances are determined to manufacture a system with its opto-mechanical mount. Finally, the entire imaging system is characterized. The form of the curved sensor is analyzed, showing few deviations from the ideal sphere. Electro-optical characterizations are realized and the image quality is determined according to the object distance, showing the effects of the deformable curvature. The ideal curved focal plane is also determined by combining a flat sensor to the manufactured optical system

Compact and lightweight optical designs achieving acceptable image quality, field of view, eye clearance, eyebox size, operating across the visible spectrum, are the key to the success of next generation head-worn displays. The first part of this thesis reports on the design, fabrication, and analysis of off-axis magnifier designs. The first design is catadioptric and consists of two elements. The lens utilizes a diffractive optical element and the mirror has a free-form surface described with an x-y polynomial. A comparison of color correction between doublets and single layer diffractive optical elements in an eyepiece as a function of eye clearance is provided to justify the use of a diffractive optical element. The dual-element design has an 8 mm diameter eyebox, 15 mm eye clearance, 20 degree diagonal full field, and is designed to operate across the visible spectrum between 450-650 nm. 20% MTF at the Nyquist frequency with less than 3% distortion has been achieved in the dual-element head-worn display. An ideal solution for a head-worn display would be a single free-form surface mirror design. A single surface mirror does not have dispersion; therefore, color correction is not required. A single surface mirror can be made see-through by machining the appropriate surface shape on the opposite side to form a zero power shell. The second design consists of a single off-axis free-form mirror described with an x-y polynomial, which achieves a 3 mm diameter exit pupil, 15 mm eye relief, and a 24 degree diagonal full field of view. The second design achieves 10% MTF at the Nyquist frequency set by the pixel spacing of the VGA microdisplay with less than 3% distortion. Both designs have been fabricated using diamond turning techniques. Finally, this thesis addresses the question of what is the optimal surface shape for a single mirror constrained in an off-axis magnifier configuration with multiple fields? Typical optical surfaces implemented in raytrace codes today are functions mapping two dimensional vectors to real numbers. The majority of optical designs to-date have relied on conic sections and polynomials as the functions of choice. The choice of conic sections is justified since conic sections are stigmatic surfaces under certain imaging geometries. The choice of polynomials from the point of view of surface description can be challenged. A polynomial surface description may link a designer s understanding of the wavefront aberrations and the surface description. The limitations of using multivariate polynomials are described by a theorem due to Mairhuber and Curtis from approximation theory. This thesis proposes and applies radial basis functions to represent free-form optical surfaces as an alternative to multivariate polynomials. We compare the polynomial descriptions to radial basis functions using the MTF criteria. The benefits of using radial basis functions for surface description are summarized in the context of specific head-worn displays. The benefits include, for example, the performance increase measured by the MTF, or the ability to increase the field of view or pupil size. Even though Zernike polynomials are a complete and orthogonal set of basis over the unit circle and they can be orthogonalized for rectangular or hexagonal pupils using Gram-Schmidt, taking practical considerations into account, such as optimization time and the maximum number of variables available in current raytrace codes, for the specific case of the single off-axis magnifier with a 3 mm pupil, 15 mm eye relief, 24 degree diagonal full field of view, we found the Gaussian radial basis functions to yield a 20% gain in the average MTF at 17 field points compared to a Zernike (using 66 terms) and an x-y polynomial up to and including 10th order. The linear combination of radial basis function representation is not limited to circular apertures. Visualization tools such as field map plots provided by nodal aberration theory have been applied during the analysis of the off-axis systems discussed in this thesis. Full-field displays are used to establish node locations within the field of view for the dual-element head-worn display. The judicious separation of the nodes along the x-direction in the field of view results in well-behaved MTF plots. This is in contrast to an expectation of achieving better performance through restoring symmetry via collapsing the nodes to yield field-quadratic astigmatism.

No description available.