Although thermal imaging with infrared cameras has a great potential especially in industrial applications, it has only made its way into automation and quality assurance to a very limited extend. While with the introduction of uncooled detectors the essential base technology for the design of thermal industrial cameras is available now for more than 20 years, many obstacles still remain. One important reason for the low spread in industry is the lack of standard software for thermal imaging. Integrators have to use SDK’s provided by the camera manufacturers to develop their own software solutions which means a high hurdle. Furthermore, the camera models available today are not consistently designed for industrial applications. Manufacturers have a lack of application experience and they still don‘t see industry as a relevant target market. To mention a third point, the acceptance of computer-based imaging systems tends to decline. Among others, some reasons are the complexity of such systems, costs, stability, data safety and maintenance effort.
The lecture presents a new device-related approach with smart thermal cameras to address the obstacles for practical applications and to make the potential of temperature imaging in industrial environments accessible.