An angled axis machine vision system having a camera system angled with respect to an axis of the coordinate system of the environment. The system may include cameras (102-105) attached to a camera mount (101) rotatably mounted a support. The cameras angled about the roll axis so that horizontal and vertical lines in the environment appear as angled lines enabling more accurate distance calculations by eliminating the inherent problems of utilizing lines that are about parallel to the axis between the camera centers. With angled axis rotation it is still possible for lines in the environment to be parallel to the axis between the camera centers, but these instances are rarer in real world environments. The cameras can also be angled downward so that near objects are more readily observed. The system can use captured images for distance calculations. The system can also use two sets of images to correlate distances calculated from each set of pictures.
