METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR RECORDING IMAGES IN THE ALIGNING OF VEHICLES HAVING A COLOR-SELECTIVE BEAM SPLITTER

1 - 10 . (canceled)

11 . An image-recording device for aligning vehicles, comprising:

at least one camera;

at least one illumination device; and

at least one color-selective beam splitter which is designed to at least one of: channel light from different directions into the at least one camera, and color-selectively direct light from the at least one illumination device into different directions;

wherein the color-selective beam splitter has at least one optical marker that is able to be captured by a camera of another image-recording device to determine the position of the color-selective beam splitter in relation to the camera of the other image-recording device.

12 . The image-recording device as recited in claim 11 ,

wherein the beam splitter includes at least one dichroic element.

13 . The image-recording device as recited in claim 11 , wherein the beam splitter is designed to color-selectively divert light from or into at least three different directions.

14 . The image-recording device as recited in claim 11 , wherein the illumination device includes a plurality of light sources including a plurality of light sources that emit light of different color.

15 . The image-recording device as recited in claim 14 , wherein the illumination device s designed to drive the light sources at least one of: i) in pulsed fashion, and ii) separately from each other.

16 . The image-recording device as recited in claim 11 , wherein the camera includes a color-selective image sensor, the image sensor being equipped with a Bayer filter.

17 . A system for aligning vehicles, comprising:

at least two image-recording devices, each of the image-recording devices including at least one camera, at least one illumination device, and at least one color-selective beam splitter which is designed to at least one of: channel light from different directions into the at least one camera, and color-selectively direct light from the at least one illumination device into different directions, wherein the color-selective beam splitter has at least one optical marker that is able to be captured by a camera of another image-recording device to determine the position of the color-selective beam splitter in relation to the camera of the other image-recording device.

18 . The system for aligning vehicles as recited in claim 17 , further comprising:

at least one evaluation device which is designed to evaluate the images captured by the cameras of the image-recording devices to determine the relative position of the image-recording devices.

19 . A method for recording images in the aligning of vehicles, the method comprising:

mounting one image-recording device on each side of a vehicle to be aligned, the image-recording devices each including at least one camera, at least one illumination device, and at least one color-selective beam splitter which is designed to at least one of: channel light from different directions into the at least one camera, and color-selectively direct light from the at least one illumination device into different directions, wherein the color-selective beam splitter has at least one optical marker that is able to be captured by a camera of another image-recording device to determine the position of the color-selective beam splitter in relation to the camera of the other image-recording device;

capturing images of the optical markers, which are applied on the beam splitters, by the camera of the respective other image-recording device; and

determining a relative position of the two image-recording devices from the images captured.

20 . The method as recited in claim 19 , further comprising:

driving the light sources in at least one of pulsed fashion and separately from each other.