Multi-sensor visual measurement system based on 1394 bus

In order to improve the measurement speed of a large scale multi-sensor visual measurement system, in this paper a novel high speed measurement system based on 1394 bus is introduced. The implementation of 1394 bus in the system make both the image data from the visual sensors and the controlling signals can share the same high speed 1394 bus. This can overcome some drawbacks, such that the data and controlling signals transmit in data bus and controlling bus separately, which are often used in traditional large scale multi-sensor visual measurement systems. Another merit of using 1394 bus in the system is to make the system more compact, reliable and maintainable. In the system, the parallel image grabbing and processing units are also adopted. Consequently, the measurement time of the system can be reduced dramatically for real-time measurement situations. It is also worth noting that a flash programmable memory is used in each image processing unit for facilitating the measurement system to measure different objects.