I'm looking for a sensor, industrial use, which needs to be relatively small and very cheap. It needs to give the following information:

1. Distances between objects in real time, as objects may come and an object may leave. This is the red drawings.
2. Object's length in real time. This is the yellow drawings
3. sensing distance: 0.5m-0.6n - i.e. how long the can be the distance between the black line and an object.
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Sorry for the childish illustration I have added, but I can not send the original files, as they are classified.

Thus, the system needs to know if there is an object over there. If yes, it should tell its length. If not, it should tell where is an empty space, and how long is it. We need to measure only one dimension, and that is the one that is parallel to the sensor. It is very important that the sensors would give information in real time, because the situation is always changing - it is possible that would be many objects at a time, and it possible that would be none at all.

The sensors would be parallel to the objects, as the objects we mean to detect are like cars, which means that the sensor\sensors need to be very long. The length of the sensor\sensors (the black line), may very over our facilities, so we need the option to buy different length. A good solution may be very very small sensors, that we can place how many that we want.

We would like you to offer us a sensor that you found fit to the following explanation. We are open to hear any suggestion, even if it is a bit different than what we have asked, but one that servers the same purpose in the most efficient way.


Thank you

 

Welcome to AAC!
The type of sensor would almost certainly depend on the nature of the objects. Are they all similar? Transparent, reflective, ferromagnetic, .......... ?
Few sensors are truly real-time. Most would involve signal-processing delays. How much delay can you tolerate between an object being within the specified detection zone and the sensor providing an output to indicate that?
How rapidly are the objects moving? Approximate dimensions to be measured?

 

Welcome to AAC!
The type of sensor would almost certainly depend on the nature of the objects. Are they all similar? Transparent, reflective, ferromagnetic, .......... ?
Few sensors are truly real-time. Most would involve signal-processing delays. How much delay can you tolerate between an object being within the specified detection zone and the sensor providing an output to indicate that?
How rapidly are the objects moving? Approximate dimensions to be measured?

First of all, thank you for answering!

For your questions:
1. Yes they are all similar. You can take cars as a perfect example to them, they are almost the same as cars. Although, dimensions or the metal that they are made of, may differ, exactly as cars.
2. Of course that as cars, they are made of different kinds of metal\alloy. To conclude, if it can detect any car, it can detect any object we need it to detect.
3. Few seconds of delay would be fine - 1-15 seconds. Though, we would rather it to be as precise as possible. Note: price plays a big role for us, so we would rather a very cheap 15sec delay sensor, on a very expansive 1sec delay sensor.
4. The objects pose themselves parallel to the black line, and after unknown time they leave, just as car park. We don't know how rapidly that would happen, it may change between one scenario we mock, to another. But it is very important that the sensor would be active 24\7, so it is capable to know what happens all time, with the delay mentioned above.
5. Dimensions are the same as cars, as I said before.

If you need more details, I would be more than happy to provide them! Thank you!

 

define "very cheap"?
Industrial and "cheap" typically don't go together but I don't know how you define cheap...

This sure sounds like a job for a vision camera of sorts but I wouldn't classify those as "very cheap" by any means and would expect the device to be in the multi-thousand dollar range..
If you define "very cheap" as just being under $10,000 then you might be ok..

I would discuss your needs with companies like Cognex, Sick,etc...

 

What resolution of measurement do you need? How about a row of IR emitters on one side, and IR receivers on the other. As the object moves in-between, the IR will be blocked and the IR receivers will go dark. You can send IR patterns to reduce interference by ambient light (sunlight), and you can focus the IR transmitters if you want more accuracy.

 

What is the resolution you need for the object size?

 

...Delete wrong reply...

 

I'm aiming at something about 25mm (1 inch) wide, 150mm (6 inch) long, that is about 25mm from a second parallel object of similar size, but 75mm closer. I need to be able to pick one specifically.

I thought the TS had the requirement.

 

The next version of iOS will include a type of augmented reality able to identify and provide the dimensions of objects in view. Just sayin’. Probably the cheapest machine vision solution you’ll find.

 

I thought the TS had the requirement.

Oh crap I replied to the wrong thread, oops!