STEMMER IMAGING

With the new version MERLIC 4.7, the integrability into the process environment and the handling of cameras has been optimised. Numerous other improvements include, for example, accelerated startup time and optimisation of some of MERLIC's tools.

• Connectivity

A highlight of MERLIC 4.7 is the improved connectivity. New standard interfaces have been added, such as the integrated OPC UA server, socket communication as well as a communicator plug-in interface (API), which will enable customers to develop their own communication interfaces. MERLIC can thus be seamlessly integrated into almost any machine.

• Camera Handling

In MERLIC 4.7 the first version of the Image Source Manager (ISM) will be available. This detaches the image acquisition source from the tool flow and allows MVApps to be easily copied and executed between different systems without adjustments to the camera settings. MERLIC also supports the hardware trigger of cameras as well as the "continuous execution" mode in addition to the "single execution" mode.

• General Improvements

Beginning with this release, MERLIC is built on HALCON Progress , thus laying the foundation to offer the latest image processing features in upcoming MERLIC releases. These include, for example, deep-learning-based tools or the reading of new data code types.

Other improvements Include the significantly accelerated startup time of MERLIC, which has a particularly strong impact on lower performant systems. In addition, the execution time for each tool can now be measured. This allows tracking down the most time-consuming tools in an MVApp.

An outstanding, innovative, and unique feature in MERLIC is the easyTouch concept. It guides you towards your solution interactively.

The image-centered design allows you to configure the application directly via the image without the need to write source code or to adjust lots of parameters. Just point and click.

The MERLIC tools flow are completely redesigned, providing users with a clear and intuitive user interface. You can easily arrange and connect tools and logic elements using known principles like drag & drop, copy & paste, and multi-selection.

MERLIC offers full integration for your entire application into your machine environment. MERLIC can communicate with common fieldbus and real-time Ethernet industrial protocols, such as EtherCAT, PROFINET, and many others via Hischer PC cards.

Additionally, MERLIC comes with an integrated OPC UA server to connect with most of OPC UA clients. With socket communication, as well as a communicator plug-in interface (API), you are able to extend the supported communication hardware by designing your own plug-ins.

MERLIC also offers 3D vision tools based on height images which, for example, enable users to read embossed text and perform other 3D machine vision tasks.

For this, tools are included that make it possible to prepare images from 3D sensors or 3D cameras so that inspections can be subsequently carried out using MERLIC’s existing 2D tools.

These tools enable the conversion of a disparity image into a 3D height image, the alignment of a selected plane, the compensation of outliers and invalid pixels in the image data, as well as the scaling of height image values into an 8-bit image.

MERLIC supports the parallel processing and execution of different tools. This makes it possible to solve different image processing tasks in one instance and greatly simplifies the implementation of multi-camera setups.

Interactively design a frontend for your application: choose between various widgets and simply place them by drag & drop.

MERLIC allows you to run the frontend and the processing of your application on separate computers. You can also open various frontends from different computers to control or operate the machine.

MERLIC's tool library can be extended flexibly with customised, user-defined tools to suit any additional needs. These tools can be developed in Halcon's integrated development environment HDevelop.