The 2018 VDMA machine-vision report offers interesting insights in the benefits and properties of machine-vision in industrial environments.
Below the seven most important trends for 2019 and onwards.
The third dimension
With machine vision becoming three-dimensional, many tasks can be accomplished in a cost-effective way. From the precise inspection
of adhesive beading or welded seams and automated gripping of unsorted items in boxes through to non-contact precision measuring of
formed sheet metal parts in the production cycle.
This is absolutely true for all companies within One of A Kind Technologies, Beltech uses 3D vision to make robotics more flexible, Vimec is mainly 2D oriented, and also offers confocal 3D solutions.
Standardisation
Standardised interfaces facilitate the integration of individual machine vision components into an overall workable system. This reduces the amount of effort required and makes the machine vision solution efficient and inexpensive.
Performance
The efficiency of machine vision systems is rapidly increasing, thanks to higher definition cameras, steadily increasing processor
performance as well as multi-core processor technology, state-of-the-art software and standardised interfaces. Ever more rapid inspection speeds and accuracies are thus achieved at comparable costs.
Colour
In many applications, colour recognition is of great advantage. For example, different models or components can be identified or sorted, and quality checks can be conducted on the basis of colour. Colour recognition has now become a standard routine for which numerous machine-vision solutions are available.
Colour machine-vision has been increasingly applied in agriculture and food production.
User-friendliness
User-friendlinessWhereas in the past experts were needed to implement machine vision solutions, today many adaptations can be carried out without
any great prior knowledge, thanks to intuitive configuration options and ergonomic software user interfaces.
Highly integrated and embedded
Complete systems can be housed in ever smaller casings. Such smart cameras and vision sensors can be integrated in places where little space is available. This “embedded machine vision” is particularly advantageous in highly complex installations.
Our sister-company Smart Vision Center (SVC) demonstrates this with their Cognex smart camera’s, compact, fast and very well integratable in machines and processes
Hyperspectral Imaging
Hyperspectral cameras or sensors take several images of a scene in different wavelength ranges. Combined, the images provide a greater depth of information. This technology is used in areas and applications whenever ingredients or substances need to be identified and discerned, and are not recognizable through a standard color or monochrome picture. For instance, in the food or
wood industry, in recycling, mining or agriculture.
This technique is especially emerging in our sister-company Beltech, where #AgroFood and #Foodtech requires hyperspectral imaging as a main topic.
Read the full VDMA-report here.
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