Thermal Camera

A camera that captures infrared heat radiation instead of visible light, revealing an object’s temperature distribution.

A thermal camera captures the infrared radiation objects emit themselves (long-wave infrared, for most consumer and industrial models), converting temperature differences into an image; uncooled models commonly use a microbolometer as the sensor. Because it doesn’t depend on ambient light, it can form an image in total darkness, smoke, or partial fog, and it is very sensitive to warm-blooded people and animals. In robotics it is commonly used for inspection (finding overheating electrical equipment or pipe leaks), search and rescue, and detecting people for security, and some research fuses it with RGB and depth cameras to improve perception at night. A few caveats: ordinary glass is opaque to long-wave infrared, so a thermal camera can’t see through a window; its resolution is usually lower than an RGB camera’s; and the temperature it reads is affected by the object’s emissivity.

ExampleA substation inspection robot scans a switchgear cabinet with a thermal camera and finds one connector running noticeably hotter than its surroundings, automatically flagging a possible loose connection.

Also called

Infrared Camera, Thermal Imager, Long-Wave Infrared Camera

Related

Inspection Robot · RGB Camera · Multi-Sensor Fusion · Exteroception · Special-purpose Robot

Sources

Thermographic camera (Wikipedia)