Virtual prototyping as an approach to optimizing starting point selection in a mass production of camera lenses

摘要

Mass-production of optical and opto-electronic devices is very critical to the number of the elements, their shape and type. Physical prototyping for this optical system depends not only on the lens quality and quantity, but also on the camera housing and the sensor. In our research we've studied the reasons of optical systems' complexity and found out that it depends on optical system structure. After that a lens is optimized, tolerances are calculated and physical prototyping is implemented. In our case physical prototyping means a trial lot production. It was found, that virtual prototyping for different starting points can help to find the solution for mass-production, which will be then used for its manufacturing. This approach includes calculation of all elements of the camera lens from the first surface of a lens to the sensor, including 3D environment model. Depending on the type of the designed optical system, the virtual prototype modeling is included into a merit function for further optimization in the automatic lens design software. We can estimate a reduction of visual contrast of the image of the camera lens in the conditions similar to the conditions of the real device operation or show dependence of the contrast reduction in time of the operation. We implemented such an approach as a virtual parametric model of the lens camera device. We show a plot of the dependence on the cost of mass production of the mobile phone camera from the number of components. The cost information is valid for China.