Locate Machine-Vision Resources on the Web
We searched the Web and found many useful sources of machine-vision information.
Jon Titus, Editorial Director -- Test & Measurement World, 10/15/2000
Using the Web to search for information about most topics looks deceptively simple. Just find a search engine and type in the words you want to search for. Unfortunately, such searches end up listing more Web sites than you could possibly sift through. Typing in “machine vision,” for example, turns up thousands of sites that have nothing to do with what test engineers think of as computer-based inspection topics. We’ve spent some time culling the sites to provide you with some of the best. Because many of the sites offer links to other related sites, you should find our list a good starting place for tracking down information. You can find this list on our Web site (www.tmworld com/Inspection_Corner/ins_soc.html). Most of the links we’ve collected point to noncommercial sites. Manufacturers’ sites offer application notes, software downloads, and product information, but the information is usually geared toward the vendors’ products. We decided not to list these sources. Instead, we winnowed our list to the sites you might have a difficult time finding. If you need to find manufacturers’ sites, visit our Online Buyer’s Guide. You can choose from 23 product types under the Inspection Equipment category, and you’ll find several useful product categories listed under Software. We did not explore sites that required registration, nor did we enter sites that wanted us to run ActiveX components, because of the threat of viruses. Many of the sites, though, do charge for their information. When you do your search, heed these words of caution: Avoid searching on broad-ranging phrases such as “machine vision” or “image processing.” Those terms find too many sites that deal with computer vision for robotics, computer vision as it relates to simulating human eye responses, image processing in the life sciences, and so on. Image-processing sites also may deal with images in the graphic arts as well as with the theoretical and mathematical aspects of image analysis. You can narrow your search by combining other key words such as “production,” “circuit boards,” and so on. We searched using AltaVista (www.altavista.com) and Google (www.google.com). If you come across a site you think would help others apply machine vision in the electronics test field, send us the URL and a note by e-mail to: tmw@cahners.com. We’ll check it out and, if appropriate, list it on our Web site as part of this list. |
Automated Imaging Association (AIA); Machine Vision Online
www.machinevisiononline.org
The association’s site provides many resources for someone interested in machine vision. You’ll find news, tutorial information, and an events calendar. The group sponsors The Vision Show.
Carnegie Mellon University, Computer Vision Homepage
www.cs.cmu.edu/~cil/vision.html
The Computer Vision Homepage at Carnegie Mellon University provides information relating to university research, and it offers links to other sites involved with computer-vision research. The site emphasizes research rather than commercial products and applications. One of the highlights of the site is its many links to test images.
Machine Vision Association of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers
www.sme.org/mva
The group offers a quarterly newsletter, books, and copies of conference papers, and it sponsors an applied machine-vision conference. Unfortunately, you’ll need a membership ($60/yr) to gain access to the technical resources on this site.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
www-ismv.ic.ornl.gov
The laboratory’s site hosts the Image Science and Machine Vision Group’s Web site. The group conducts applied research in machine vision, and it publishes papers you can access on its Web site. Papers cover pattern recognition, robotic vision, image processing, as well as other related topics.
The Photonics Resource Center
optics.org/home.ssi
The International Society of Optical Engineers (SPIE; www.spie.org) and the Institute of Physics sponsor this Web site. You can find many papers related to machine vision, but the site charges a fee for access to each paper.
www.optics.org/oo/optical_standards/ansispec.html
A section of the site lists ANSI optical standards such as “Method for Determining the Distribution of Illuminance Over the Field of a Photographic Objective,” and “Guide to Optical Transfer Function Measurement and Reporting.” You can go to the ANSI site (www.ansi.org) to purchase copies of individual standards.
Glossaries
Video Essentials Glossary
www.videoessentials.com/glossary.htm
Here’s a helpful glossary of video-related terms. The information on this site goes beyond the usual simple descriptions of terms such as aspect ratio and saturation. If you need video information, this is a good site to bookmark.
Vision 1—Comprehensive, Machine Vision Glossary of Terms
www.vision1.com/gl.html
This commercial site provides a good glossary of machine-vision and inspection-related terms. The site also includes links to test images, but few of them relate to electronics inspection. You’ll also find an extensive list of research labs, but these links lack descriptions.
Software
Bar Codes
www.simplesearch.com/catsearch/Computers/Software/Bar_Code/index.shtml
If you need software to create bar codes to identify products, or if you need software to decode them, this site provides dozens of links to suppliers of shareware and commercial products.
Image Processing
www.ncc.com/cdroms/ipt/index.html
The Image Processing Tools CD-ROM from Network Cybernetics has been available for about five years, but it still contains useful information on image processing, algorithms, file formats, and image analysis. You can check out the CD’s contents at the company’s site. Price: $79.
Image Analysis
www.neatvision.com/introduction.html
NeatVision provides a shareware image-analysis and software-development package you can use to create complex machine-vision applications. You can link your programs to a library of Java algorithms using a graphical user interface that lets you connect functional blocks on your PC’s screen. The software works with Windows 95/98/NT. Price: $40, shareware fee.
www.sgi.com/grafica
If you’re interested in the mathematics of image manipulations, read “Matrix Operations for Image Processing” (www.sgi.com/grafica/matrix/index.html). The article includes code snippets and a link to complete C code for the examples. Silicon Graphics includes this article on the Graphica Obscura site titled, “Collected Computer Graphic Hacks.” The site also includes a great deal of image-related information.
members1.chello.nl/~g.wiersma
You can get a free machine-vision program from J. van de Loosdrecht, a lecturer at the Noordelijke Hogeschool Leeuwarden, a polytechnic institute in the Netherlands. The program on the iVision site is meant for noncommercial use, so use it as a learning tool. Then, you can move to a commercial package when you need to develop your complete application.
image-integration. com/downloads/downloads.htm
Image Integration offers Image++, a software package that allows you to manipulate images. The software provides an easy way to see what effect various image-processing steps have on an image. Price: $49, shareware fee.
Vision Source Code
www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/cil/www/txtv-source.html
This page at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science site lists many commercial, research, and shareware programs for computer-vision applications. The links take you from individual Web sites to company pages such as Intel.
Lighting
www.cs.cf.ac.uk/User-bin/M.R.F.Lewis/lighting.cgi
Get your lighting questions answered on the Lighting Advisor site. You can select from 190 topics that cover lighting techniques for vision applications and microscopy. Professor Bruce Batchelor at the University of Wales College of Cardiff (Wales, UK) maintains this site. You may find some of the answers short on specifics, but poke around. Click on the light bulb in each topic “card” to get to the diagrams of lighting arrangements.
Lenses
www.graflex.org/lenses/lens-faq.html
When you have questions about lenses, turn to the lens frequently asked questions (FAQ) section at this site dedicated to Graflex cameras. The FAQ isn’t an open forum or chat group, but a tutorial formed of step-by-step questions and answers about lenses and their characteristics. You’ll find this classic tutorial by David Jacobsen posted on other sites, too.
www.computeroptics.com/lenselect.html
A short article, “How to select a stock lens,” on the Computer Optics site explains how to relate lens characteristics to the camera you plan to use and the dimensions of the object you intend to examine. The site also includes an article on refurbishing old lenses.
Lens-Selection Software
www.optimumvision.co.uk/support.htm
When it is time to select a lens for your camera, download the free Lens Selector software from Optimum Vision (Hants, UK). This software will help you select the right lens for your camera. The software relies on a large database of camera and lens information.
Tutorials
Delft University of Technology
www.ph.tn.tudelft.nl/Courses/FIP/frames/fip.html
The university’s site offers an excellent machine-vision tutorial that ranges from basic topics such as tools and image sampling, through more complex topics such as noise and algorithms.
Executive Automation Systems
www.scx2.com/third_level/Automated_imaging_web1.htm
At this site, you’ll find several useful tutorials, including helpful illustrations, that cover machine vision and 3-D metrology. You’ll need to print these tutorials, though, because the colored backgrounds make them difficult to read on a monitor.
Java World
www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-09-1998/jw-09-media.html
Want to see how you can use Java to process images? This short tutorial includes vivid image examples and Java code. Although not strictly related to machine-vision applications, you’ll get a feel for what you can do with Java in a machine-vision application. Lots of other Java-related information exists on the site, too.
Pinnacle Vision
www.pinnaclevision.co.uk/illum02.htm
You’ve got to illuminate the products or assemblies you want to inspect, so check out this tutorial on lighting techniques. The material on this commercial site includes helpful diagrams that show how light can illuminate objects to enhance images acquired by a machine-vision system.
Quality Digest Magazine
www.qualitydigest.com/oct98/html/machfutr.html
The magazine’s site includes the article, “The Future of Machine Vision,” by John Agapakis of RVSI. The article provides an overview of state-of-the-art machine-vision systems and the implication of new technologies for system developers and users.
Vision1
www.vision1.com/vsi/mvaques.html
When it comes time to consider a real machine-vision application, here’s a checklist you can use to gather information in an orderly fashion. Questions range from the general to the specific. You can use the checklist, located on the Vision1 site, as an outline to help you determine what subjects you need to research.
Miscellaneous
Tomi Engahl’s Video Technology Page
godot.tuniv.szczecin.pl/~mjaskula/tomi/video.html
You’ll find this site useful when you need information about video signals and video standards. The site also includes links to other sources of information about video systems hardware.
