Machine vision

Machine vision is the way to give eyes to the computerized devices. The ability to “see” brings manufacturing to a higher level of production quality. It also increases throughput and decrease costs.

There are many kinds of vision systems  CCTV, Safety, Scanners, Smart cameras, etc Smart cameras are digital input-output devices, designed to control production equipment, such as robot manipulators or devices for separating defective products. Machine vision is a subset of engineering, which unites computer engineering, optics, mechanical engineering and industrial automation. In robotics, smart cameras there are two main purposes: orientation and quality check.

Orientation is the method that allows robots and self-driven vehicles to the surrounding world and orient themselves accordingly. For example, pick-up robot that has to collect parts from the conveyor or the bin needs a special camera to detect the location by 2D or 3D imaging and then, find the best approach to pick it up.

Quality Check is an inspection of manufactured goods such as semiconductor chips, automobiles, food and pharmaceuticals. Before vision came to the industry, workers on the assembly lines examined some of the products, making conclusions about the quality of the entire batch. Machine vision systems replaced most of QC/QA positions on those lines, increased performance and have the ability to examine each product in the batch. This advantage reduces the risk to release a defective product. Smart cameras have the ability to locate the object, to examine size, shape or position, and give the controller information by IO or communication interface. Based on that information, controller takes an action accordingly. In addition, smart cameras can recognize 1D and 2D barcodes or texts using OCR. This functionality is usually used for validation or separation purposes.

Promacon provides services for the design, development, installation, commissioning, maintenance and updating of machine vision systems of any complexity level within the predefined term!