Automatic brightness and contrast adjustment of a video camera for industrial or military purposes

Abstract

Abstract The invention relates to a device and a method for optimising the brightness and the contrast of a video image, which is used for controlling a manipulating device (2). The gain/offset control of the video camera (1) is determined by the picture control unit (3) in such a manner that the weighted mean value (13) of the object brightness (11) assumes a fixed predetermined value (10). Furthermore, the gain parameter of the video camera (1) is optimised with respect to the contrast (15) between the weighted brightness (13) of the object (7) and the corresponding value (14) of the background (8). The determining factor in this is the minimum overlap of the brightness distributions (11,12) of object and background with minimum contrast (15) of the weighted mean brightness values. The manipulating device (2) can be an industrial robot (21) by means of which a workpiece (71) or tool (72) can be treated. As a further possibility, the manipulating device (2) can be used in the form of a platform (22) for tracking a target (73). <IMAGE>

Inventors

• 👤 Albin Vuichard
• 👤 Werner Gebauer
• 👤 Bruno Buehler

Bibliographic Details