Artificial Vision – Imaging beyond the factory floor
14 Jan 2021 | Reading time: 2 min
Machine vision systems have been a prominent part of industrial automation processes for decades. They inspect production operations to ensure everything meets predefined guidelines, assist with guidance on automated manufacturing processes and check the quality of manufactured products.
They can even improve the production quality and efficiency by continuously monitoring operations and identifying weak points. Once the products have been manufactured or produced they can grade them.
We’ve used machine vision in countless applications where its function is to assist with manufacturing products or growing/harvesting produce.
Examples
MACHINE VISION
Gap and flush measurement in the automotive sector
Robotic guidance on assembly operations in factory automation
OCR and 2D code reading in print and packaging
Visual display confirmations in test and measurement
Visual display confirmations in test and measurement
Seal inspection in food and beverage
Component presence detection in electronics
Harvesting and packaging of agricultural products
We’re still working on lots of applications in those areas, but recently, we’ve seen an increase in the use of computer vision in applications that don’t necessarily produce anything.
All of the systems and technologies that were originally developed for the industrial sector are increasingly being used for non-industrial applications. These can include things like diagnostic imaging, image analysis, monitoring, data collection, recording, traffic ITS, track and trace, sports analysis, 3D tracking for cinematography, and medical analysis.
One of the main reasons for growth and the increased interest in machine vision could be that the performance of the technologies has dramatically improved while the prices have fallen considerably over the last few years, making it a lot more accessible – this enables us to work in new markets to help improve their growth potential.
This definition also covers applications in food and agriculture, as well as in medical diagnostics technology. In these growth markets, we see vision technology providing a particularly promising opportunity to solve completely new tasks in the future.
