Robots, with vision, at your service

A recent article and video in the New York Times describes Bandit, a robot built by researchers at the University of Southern California, which interacts with autistic children. Three-foot-tall Bandit can maintain “eye” contact with an autistic child and, sometimes, use playful or sympathetic actions to overcome withdrawn behavior.

Another robot, named RUBI—Robot Using Bayesian Inference—at the University of California, San Diego, images children’s faces, recognizes basic emotions from facial muscle movement, and responds with verbal and physical gestures of encouragement.

These service robots are part of a rapidly growing wave of robotic human helpers. In the classroom they may supplement the work of human teachers, during surgery they may perform delicate procedures, and on the battlefield they may help disarm a roadside bomb, as described in our June 2010 cover story.

The technological differences between these service robots--with their vision and image processing functions--and robots used in industrial applications can be small. For example, a recent article on our website describes the work of researchers at the Technical University of Munich who are imaging non-verbal communications such as gestures and facial expressions as a method of interacting with robots. To date, they have demonstrated that their work can help those that require assisted living and workers in automated production plants, where background noise may make speech recognition difficult.

Recently, European researchers have built a robot for 'on-demand' rubbish collection – just make a call and it will soon arrive at your door. It's ideal for collecting waste in the narrow streets of many historical towns.



About the size of a person, it can navigate the narrowest of alleys, stop outside your door and take your rubbish away. And the best bit is this: You don't have to remember when to put your bin out, but simply make a telephone call. Soon the robot is waiting outside your door, ready to receive your rubbish.

July VSD online--Hyperspectral imaging, minature autofocus lenses, 3-D vision

To capture continuous spectral bands from the UV to the far IR, hyperspectral imaging has become a powerful imaging tool. In our July issue, Rand Swanson at Resonon describes a compact hyperspectral imaging system that has been flown in a Cessna aircraft to monitor the spread of leafy spurge, an invasive weed that reduces grazing forage for livestock.

In our Product Focus article, editor Andy Wilson describes recent developments in miniaturized autofocus lenses. Whether based on electro-optical, electromechanical, thermo-optical, or acousto-mechanical techniques, these tunable optics will find cutting-edge applications in smart machine-vision systems, endoscopy systems, and mobile phones.

Our cover story shows how an optical tester based on an off-the-shelf camera system can be used to calibrate centering errors of lenses to ensure the imaging quality of an optical assembly or subassembly.

3-D vision remains one of the most alluring areas for innovation in machine vision development. While dual-camera and time-of-flight sensors are becoming increasingly important, other options such as the one described in an article about ISee3D now allow stereo images to be captured from a single camera/lens combination.

We also have articles on: inspection of wood surfaces for defects by researchers at AIDO in Spain; an algorithm that uses partial deriatives to improve edge detection; and an FFT processor that performs phase correlation.

Blogging about machine vision – interested?

Some cynics I know mock the idea of blogging, but I think it’s a good way to explore a subject such as machine vision. And a blogger might even be paid the highest compliment--having your blog blogged about.

A case in point: editor Andy Wilson’s My View video blog on the Vision Systems Design website was recently blogged about by Laura Hoffman, who runs the Microscan blog SolutionConnection, along with colleagues such as John Agapakis.

Numerous other companies in the machine vision industry have blogs or are trying to figure out what they could write that wouldn’t rattle internal corporate feathers but would still be interesting. Like Microscan, Thor Vollset at ScorpionVision’s blog is aiming to keep readers up to date on the company and how customers can use its products.

Then there are system integrators who have occasional blogs on their own sites or on a magazine site. These include David Dechow at Aptura Machine Vision Solutions with his Regarding Machine Vision blog, and Ned Lecky at Lecky Integration and John Nagle at Nagle Research. Also, there are journalists who blog about related topics, such as Frank Tobe at Everything Robotic and Gabriele Jansen at Inspect-online blog.

And of course there is the popular and anonymous B Grey at machinevision4users blog, who presumably hides his or her identity out of concern about industry (or employer?) reaction. The postings vary from technical observations and comparisons to witty digs. But anonymity is both a shield and a crutch. Speaking as a journalist who must live with the consequences of what I write, I think B Grey should stand forth and be counted.

Whether anonymous or very public, all bloggers can attest to the fact that it’s not easy to post frequently and have something interesting or new--or at least amusing--to say. Yet it can be quite rewarding, personally and professionally.

Blogs can become good networking and marketing tools that engage people. And you can re-post blogs to other social media sites such as Linked In, where you will find many relevant groups such as the Vision Systems Design Group, the Machine Vision Group, the Image Processing Group, and the 3D Machine Vision Group. Most of these groups have hundreds or even thousands of members.

If you have a comment on what I’ve written, please post it on this blog.

If you’re reading this and interested in contributing a regular or at least somewhat regular blog to Vision Systems Design, please let me know: cholton@pennwell.com.

June issue: vision-guided robots, software, and Three Mile Island

Our June issue is now available on our website. The articles in it point to some of the many ways in which machine vision is evolving.

I glimpsed this potential in 1982, when I watched the feed from the first remote video camera lowered into a reactor vessel at Three Mile Island, after the nuclear accident had destroyed the reactor core in 1979. It took several years to develop the imaging equipment for this first foray and, in the years that followed, many cameras and robots would gather information about damage and perform cleanup operations in highly radioactive areas of the plant. Here's a picture of Rover, developed with Carnegie Mellon University.


Although robots were not then sophisticated enough to perform major operations—and stereo vision was practically a dream—the future of vision-guided robots was obvious. Some colleagues and I wrote a history of the cleanup, including the robotic and imaging technologies that were used. You can download a PDF of the history published by the Electric Power Research Institute by clicking HERE.


Remotely operated vehicles are now playing an increasing role in other crises. Our cover story in the June issue, for example, shows how 3-D displays can help remote operators in the military safely handle and dispose of explosive devices using robots.

Another article explains how single-sensor image fusion technology could enable simpler and more effective imaging of potential threats in security and defense operations.

Machine vision is not always on the front line of environmental and political challenges, however. Researchers from the University of Ilmenau in Germany are using image processing techniques to evaluate the quality of wheat after it is harvested.

And, as contributing editor Winn Hardin explains, manufacturers are using other machine vision techniques ensure that the steel tubes produced for oil and gas production are of the highest quality.

This broadening range of biomedical, robotics, military, and aerospace applications is leading software vendors to expand the functionality of their products beyond simple measurement functions, as editor Andy Wilson writes in his Product Focus article on machine vision software.

Indeed, new opportunities for machine vision and image processing systems are occurring every year. To take advantage of these developments, however, suppliers of machine vision systems will have to look outside the box of conventional industrial manufacturing and into niche applications that span the gamut from agriculture to space exploration.

Art, vision, and ALS - forget eye-tracking for shoppers

We've seen eye-tracking systems that help determine the preferences of shoppers or website browsers. Here's one that could really benefit people who suffer from physical limitations: The EyeWriter project.

It's an ongoing collaborative research effort to empower people who are suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS; aka Lou Gehrig's disease) with creative technologies. It allows graffiti writers and artists with paralysis resulting from ALS to draw using only their eyes.

The collaborative consists of members of Free Art and Technology (FAT), OpenFrameworks, the Graffiti Research Lab, and The Ebeling Group communities. They have teamed-up with LA graffiti writer, publisher, and activist, Tony Quan, aka TEMPTONE. He was diagnosed with ALS in 2003, a disease which has left him almost completely physically paralyzed… except for his eyes.

The long-term goal is to create a professional/social network of software developers, hardware hackers, urban projection artists and ALS patients from around the world who are using local materials and open source research to creatively connect and make eye art.

The Eyewriter from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

Click HERE to see the Specification Sheet for the Eyewriter, including the low-cost vision components that are needed.

The Vision Show revealed--on video

The most interesting thing for me about The Vision Show in Boston (May 25-27) was the simple fact that about 80 exhibitors put on a very upbeat and comprehensive showing of machine vision components available to integrators and end-users.

In one place you could see and touch the cameras, lighting, boards, cabling, etc that you might want to design into your next system. In the technical sessions and tutorials, you could also be instructed in many of the fundamentals of the technology and understand how products perform.

Here’s a video with Jeff Burnstein from the AIA talking about the show and what’s coming next.



Of course the fact that most vendors were reporting good to great sales numbers really helped. The overall mood of the roughly 1900 attendees and exhibitors was so strikingly different than during the depths of the recession that it was impossible not to get caught up in the good feelings.

Follow this link to our Video Showcase to see some of the videos that were made during the show.

British military envisions how imaging catches insurgents

Using very high-resolution digital cameras, multispectral imaging, and laser ranging, the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) says that new imaging technology will be used within 5 years to recognize insurgents or terrorists.

DSTL, which develops and tests the latest technologies for the Ministry of Defence, had members of its staff act out insurgent-like behavior, while developers and engineers took on the role of "good guys", pursuing and monitoring them.



The military twist was that these high-tech surveillance techniques are being combined with software that can pick out unusual patterns in behavior--such as two vehicles meeting in a concealed area. The surveillance, DSTL says, will eventually help to "win the battle" against insurgency. For more information, read the excellent BBC News article.