Machine vision gets soft
Steve Scheiber, Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 11/1/2006 2:00:00 AM
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Once upon a time, selecting an inspection system meant evaluating different hardware offerings. You chose a technology, such as x-ray or AOI, and looked for a machine whose features and capabilities matched the requirements of your operation. The speed and quality of image analysis depended on the system’s attainable field of view, the x-y travel of the camera or unit under test, and the hardware’s acquisition speed.
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The explosion of computing power has changed this emphasis. Image-acquisition and data-transfer rates have increased dramatically. Memory and disk storage—while not free—no longer limit image quality. And the gating issue has moved from how fast you can gather data to what the system can do with data—in other words, from the hardware to the software.
All three features in this Test Report reflect this migration. In "More versatile x-ray inspection," Paul Groome talks about software that can analyze the same x-ray data as either 2-D or 3-D images. The story on phoenix|x-ray, "10 years of machine-vision software," also emphasizes the various ways that software can manipulate the same data. And the primary achievement of MVTec is an environment for developing machine-vision applications—"Automation, Its name is software."
The capabilities of computing hardware will continue their inexorable advance. Advances in technology will continue to depend more on the imagination of people finding new ways to exploit that power than on the power itself.
Contact Steve Scheiber atsscheiber@aol.com.
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