Regardless of whether uniform portions of sausage, cheese or ice cream are required in the food industry, economical and absolutely precise testing of components in the automotive industry or micro-precision fitting accuracy for dental prostheses - the SAL3D library from the Spanish software company, Aqsense, guarantees quick and precise capture of three-dimensional objects using 3D point clouds.

Imagine a delicatessen producer wanting to fill precut halves of coconut shells automatically with ice cream on a mass production line. Of course each of these naturally grown ice cream shells are unique in size and form, each with a slightly different shape and holding capacity. Nevertheless the filling height and quantity of ice cream must correspond to a defined model, describing a standard half-shell and defining the possible tolerance range for filling. Since production is to be accomplished on a conveyor belt, this measuring pro-cess must be completed quickly and it should also be associated with minimum effort and cost. This is exactly where SAL3D from the Spanish provider, Aqsense, excels. SAL3D is a modular, standard software library for 3D image processing applications, which is completely independent of any specific hardware platform. Based on point cloud coordinates it provides an extremely accurate, digital 3D model of any object measured. In simpler terms this means in our coconut example: Based on a laser sheet-of-light method 3D data of the object are calculated and thus a precise 3D image of the object right down to the smallest detail is generated. The ice cream manufacturer is now able to automatically classify the coconut shells delivered into eight different volume classes. This classification allows the machines to fill in precisely the right quantity of ice cream without any further manual intervention. The advantage: This process eliminates any waste of ice cream and produces finished shells which appear uniform to the eye of the customer. Previously the shells were sorted manually and this only allowed classification into three volume sizes. The new technology, industrially implemented by Baixcat, system integrator out of Girona and Aqsense´s partner in 3D applications, immediately reduced the error and reject quota.

„This example shows, in a simple and graphical way, the performance capabilities and variety of applications for our proven SAL3D tool set," stated Ramon Palli, CEO of the innovative company out of Girona, Spain. Aqsense has been present on the market since 2006 with standard software libraries for 3D image processing applications and is today the only software supplier to offer a high speed, precise and robust tool for real 3D point cloud recognition and processing in production environments. The company offers mature, high-tech, practice-proven solutions and is proud to support customers with practice-oriented knowhow, detailed consulting, feasibility studies and training as well as intensive aftersales support to ensure perfect and successful integration of the 3D applications into existing production processes.

No Matter if Fish or Fowl....
Staying in the field of food, further examples of the many flexible applications for this library can be provided. For instance in the portioning process for food, when foodstuff has to be processed that differs in form and structure. This is true for almost all nature-based food provided to the customer in a packaged or refined form: sausage, ham, fish, cheese and so forth. None of these products have a standardised size in their raw format. Portioning and cutting have to therefore "naturally" follow a similar concept as mentioned before. Here again the basis is a measuring process for determining the volume of a body: The cross-sectional area of the product, i.e. a fish or a ham, is measured as it moves along a conveyor belt. The cross section area is determined and provides precise information about the volume of the body. Once the predefined weight of a portion is reached, the cutting machine seperates that particular portion. This avoids the otherwise common practice of „overfilling" the sales package and is thereby saving costs.

Implementation requires consideration of a series of high requirements, because no two fish or hams are like two peas in a pod. Thus, it is necessary to calculate the cross-section on the basis of a number of height profiles. These requirements can be solved with the aid of three cameras and the laser light intersection method. The cameras record different views of the object illuminated by laser lines, while it is located between two conveyor belts. Comprehensive measurement is accomplished here within seconds.