The next landmark in vision - [automation vision systems]

The emergence of high-speed 3D image processing technologies is a major milestone for the vision industry as it represents the most significant step change in processing capabilities since the development of the 2D pattern recognition algorithms. 3D measurement methods have been around for a while but have rarely been used in machine vision due to the computational loads involved. However, not only has processing power vastly improved over the years, but laser and camera systems are now available at lower cost and with far higher accuracy. A number of developments have boosted processing power, such as faster and multiple core CPUs, the use of Graphical Processing Unit parallel processing capabilities, and the use of FPGAs to take the load away from the more complex processing units. Not only does the technology allow fast, accurate 3D measurements, but new algorithms for 3D matching have also been developed, which allow the 3D point cloud of a test component to be compared very quickly to that of a "good" component or one derived from the original CAD data. Given the choice, most engineers would prefer to get genuine 3D information rather than extrapolated 2D representations.