Zero defects

Many reasons are often cited for deploying machine vision systems. These include improving tedious and repetitive manual inspection tasks that are prone to human error while increasing productivity at the same time.

In many manufacturing environments, single point inspection systems can determine whether a product has been properly assembled. If not, the product is then rejected and may be reworked or scrapped. Needless to say, such reworking may prove expensive if a product has gone through multiple manufacturing stages before being inspected.

To reduce the amount of reworking required, many manufacturers employ what is known as a "zero defects forward" approach. Rather than inspect a product after it has been fully assembled, the product is inspected after each step in the assembly process.

In this way, any defects that occur at each stage are recognized and can be more easily corrected before the next phase of assembly. In addition, such "zero defects forward" approaches save the time and money that would have otherwise be wasted by completing the assembly of a defective product that would ultimately need to be disassembled and then re-assembled.

To further improve the manufacturing process, manufacturers can also deploy vision-based robotics systems to automate the assembly task itself, relieving operators of the tedious job of doing so.

By deploying such systems in conjunction with vision-based inspection systems, manufacturers can further reduce assembly cost, increase productivity and eliminate human error. However, for many Smaller to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs), implementing fully automated robotic assembly systems may only be justified if the return on investment is high enough.

As an alternative, those enterprises who have already realized the benefits of implementing vision systems to inspect their products could consider deploy semi-automated assembly systems to evaluate their effectiveness.

In doing so, they will avoid the costs of implementing fully automated assembly systems, while at the same time reaping the benefits of semi-automated assembly before they ultimately and inexorably move towards a totally automated manufacturing environment.

Vision can help clear landmines

The United Nations estimates that there are more than 110m landmines scattered in 70 countries and, using current technologies, it would take over 1100 years and more than $33bn to clear them.

To help speed up the process, the UK-based Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has formed a partnership with Find A Better Way (FABW) -- a charity founded by Sir Bobby Charlton -- to fund one or more research projects focused on new ways of detecting landmines.

During a recent event held at Lloyds of London, the organizations jointly launched a call for outlines for those wishing to submit full proposals for projects, lasting between one to four years, to address research challenges in areas of landmine detection.

FABW is making around £1m available for the research and it is expected that many individuals will have research ideas to contribute. FABW aims to develop technology to accelerate the detection and safe removal of landmines globally.

The outfits are looking for research proposals which will lead to the development -- within a seven-year timescale -- of new technologies able to make the process of detecting and locating landmines for humanitarian clearance faster, cheaper and safer.

Clearly, there's scope here for those involved in the world of vision systems to make a significant contribution to these efforts. Outside the UK, many researchers such as Roger Achkar from the America University of Science and Technology (Beirut, Lebanon), for example, have already done so.

Last year, Achkar disclosed that his team had developed a robot that captures images of contaminated areas which are then processed by an artificial neural network to classify both the make and model of landmines. The results of his research work can be found here.

But clearly, a lot more work needs to be done and the new initiative is a welcome step in the right direction. Those interested in the project can find a list of organizations and individuals who are eligible to apply for funding here. The closing date for submission of outlines is March 25 2013.

More information on the project itself can be found on the EPSRC web site here.

Boredom has its benefits

Most of the engineers I know who design and build vision-based systems would describe their work as creative and intellectually challenging. And although their jobs might often be frustrating and exasperating, few of them would describe their work as anything but boring.

However, while most of us might think of being bored at work as a negative experience, a new study suggests it can have positive results including an increase in creativity -- simply because it gives us time to daydream.

That is the finding of a study being presented today by Dr. Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman from the University of Central Lancashire (Preston, UK) at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society Division of Occupational Psychology.

To reach their conclusion, Dr. Mann and Ms. Cadman conducted two studies. In the first, 40 people were asked to carry out a boring task (copying numbers out of a telephone directory) for 15 minutes, and were then asked to complete another task (coming up with different uses for a pair of polystyrene cups) that gave them a chance to display their creativity.

It transpired that the 40 people who had first copied out the telephone numbers were more creative than a control group of 40 who had just been asked to come up with uses for the cups.

To see if daydreaming was a factor in this effect, a second boring task was introduced that allowed even more daydreaming than the boring writing task. This second study saw 30 people copying out the numbers as before, but also included a second group of 30 reading rather than writing them.

Again the researchers found that the people in the control group were least creative, but the people who read the names were more creative than those who had to write them out. This suggests that more passive boring activities -- like reading or perhaps attending meetings -- can lead to more creativity, whereas writing, by reducing the scope for daydreaming, reduces the creativity-enhancing effects of boredom.

Dr. Mann believes that boredom at work has always been seen as something to be eliminated, but she thinks that it may now be time to embrace it to enhance our creativity.

So the next time that you are stuck for a novel solution to one of your customer's automated inspection tasks, perhaps you should take some time out to attend a meeting, read out numbers from the telephone directory or catch up on filing some old reports. If Dr. Mann is right, just 15 minutes spent doing so might work wonders!

Visions of burgers

An average fast-food restaurant spends $135,000 every year in costs to employ individuals to produce hamburgers. But all that could soon become a thing of the past if the engineers at Momentum Machines (San Francisco, CA, USA) have anything to do with it.

For the engineers there are working on developing a robotic system that can do everything those employees can presently do, except better. Indeed, they are claiming that with their new robotic system in place, the labor savings will enable future restaurants to offer "gourmet quality" burgers at fast-food prices.

The robotic system will be able to offer custom meat grinds for every single customer. So if you want a patty with one third pork and two thirds bison ground after you place your order, that won't be a problem. Aside from mixing up and cooking the meat, the system can also slice toppings like tomatoes and pickles immediately before it places the slices onto a burger, providing customers with the freshest burger possible.

The result of all of this, at least according to the company, is that the consumer will be presented with a product that is more consistent and more sanitary. And since the system will be able to produce 360 hamburgers per hour, there will be more than enough to go around!

While it all might sound a bit far fetched, the team at Momentum Machines has an impressive background. They were trained in mechanical engineering, control systems, and physics at institutions such as Berkeley, Stanford, UCSB and Utah University. And their work experience includes firms such as iRobot, NASA, Sandia National Labs, Semiconductor Technology Associates and Tesla.

They are being advised in their endeavors by Don Fox, the CEO of Firehouse Subs and 2011 National Restaurant News Operator of the year, and The Culinary Edge, a highly esteemed restaurant consulting group. Investment capital is being provided by Lemnos Labs.

Now the results of such a system will clearly have a great impact on the folks who presently work in fast-food chains. So the noble minded folks at Momentum Machines aim to help out those who may need to "transition" to a new job as a result of their technology by offering discounted technical training to any former line cook of a restaurant that deploys the new system.

If you have a degree or two, on the other hand, you might even consider working for the company itself. Currently, it is looking to hire a mechatronics engineer as well as a machine vision specialist to further the development of the system. So if you know anything about vision systems design and love a good hamburger, you know where to go.

Seeking support

When discussing the design of any new vision system with systems integrators, I'm always intrigued to discover what specific hardware and software they chose to implement their systems.

More often than not, the two key reasons any product is chosen, of course, is based on its technical merits and its price. But there is always a third, and perhaps more important reason, that systems integrators opt for the products that they do. And that's the support that they receive from the distributor, or reseller, that sells them the product.

As one might expect, the distributor or reseller that fully comprehends, and can explain both the advantages -- and the disadvantages -- of his products, is more likely to win an order than one that is simply shipping products without much of an idea of how they work or how to integrate them into a system.

But these days, there is more to winning a sale than that. The distributor or reseller that also has some understanding of how his products will fit into the bigger scheme of things has an even greater advantage over those that simply have a basic knowledge of one or two product lines. Indeed, it is this more holistic approach that will almost guarantee that a product is specified into a new machine.

In one recent conversation I had with a systems integrator, he stated quite clearly that his choice of camera, system software and lighting products had been heavily influenced by the reseller that he discussed his machine vision needs with.

That reseller was obviously not only knowledgeable about many aspects of image processing, but was also wily enough to be able to leverage the expertise he passed along to the systems integrator into quite a lucrative sale.

In these strained economic times, however, many companies are reducing the number of experienced folks that they have on board in favor of younger, less well-paid individuals. Naturally enough, however, these folks haven't had enough years in the industry to be au fait with anything other than a basic understanding of their own company's product lines.

Fortunately for the systems integrator that I spoke to, he had been fortunate enough to find and work with a reseller that clearly understood the merits of hiring and keeping experienced multifaceted individuals who could assist him with the task of developing his vision system.

Good times in Asia?

A UK researcher made a projection this month that Asian countries -- excluding Japan -- will be the largest market for machine vision systems in 2016.

According to John Morse, the author of the latest machine vision report from IMS Research (Wellingborough, UK), Japan has always been the largest market for machine vision in the Asia Pacific region. But despite this, Japan's economic growth is currently slow largely due to decreasing demand for its exports.

Morse says that this is not expected to improve much over the next five years, because Japan's leading position is being eroded as other countries within the region embrace automation in their production facilities.

Nevertheless, the report claims that the Asian region itself -- with the exception of Japan that is -- is collectively forecast to generate revenues from sales of machine vision systems that will exceed those generated in the Americas after 2012. This rapid growth is expected to continue -- revenues from the Asian region will even surpass revenues generated in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) after 2015.

The report projects that the strongest growth for machine vision systems will be in China, South Korea and Taiwan, reflecting the general economic growth forecast in these countries.

The latest outlook from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would appear to give a lot of credibility to the IMS report. The IMF is projecting, for example, that in Asia, growth in Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will average 6.7 percent in 2012, and is forecast to accelerate to 7.25 percent in the second half of 2012.

In its latest World Economic Outlook, unveiled in Tokyo ahead of the IMF-World Bank 2012 Annual Meetings, the IMF said that the advanced economies, however, were unlikely to fare as well.

In the US, growth will average 2.2 percent this year. Real GDP is projected to expand by about 1.5 percent during the second half of 2012, rising to 2.75 percent later in 2013.

In the Euro area, it's not even that rosy. There, real GDP is projected to decline by 0.4 percent in 2012 overall during the second half of 2012 with public spending cutbacks and the still-weak financial system weighing on prospects.

But despite the bright prospects that both IMS and the IMF have painted for the folks in Asia, I can't help but feel that -- with decreasing exports to the US and Europe -- they might just see their growth stunted too.

A good month for the motors

One of the biggest markets for vision systems is in the automotive industry, where systems are not only deployed to perform numerous quality inspection tasks on the production line, but increasingly, within the automobiles themselves to provide additional levels of security for both drivers and pedestrians.

So I was pleased to hear that this month has proved a particularly splendid one for the industry. According to a monthly sales forecast developed by J.D. Power and LMC Automotive, July’s new-vehicle retail sales are expected to post the second strongest year-over-year growth rates during the past 12 months.

"Retail sales got off to a fast start in July, and while they've slowed down a bit as the month has progressed, through the first 16 selling days, they're still up 15.1 percent, compared to July 2011," said John Humphrey, senior vice president of global automotive operations at J.D. Power and Associates.

All major segments are expected to show year-over-year sales gains in July, with the exception of the midsize crossover utility vehicle segment. That aside, the sub-compact conventional, midsize conventional and compact conventional segments are projected to show year-over-year increases of 28 per cent or more.

The report goes onto say that through the first half of this year, North American light-vehicle production volume increased 22 per cent, compared with the same period in 2011. More than 1.4 million additional vehicles have been built in the first six months this year, relative to the first half of 2011, with inventory replenishment and stronger demand in the first quarter being the main factor for the higher production volume.

Honda and Toyota's production in the first half this year is up 75 per cent and 65 per cent, respectively, as both manufacturers continue to recover from the impact of the Japanese tsunami. What is more, US manufacturing growth is outperforming the rest of North America, with a 26 per cent year-to-date increase. Production in Mexico has increased 13 per cent and Canadian manufacturing up 19 per cent.

While this is clearly good news for the auto makers themselves, it bodes well for many of us involved in the vision systems business who supply vision systems to them.

You can find more details of the report here.

Vision system helps students find a place in the library

A team of researchers from the Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken NJ, USA) have developed a vision-based system that will enable students to find a seat in the university’s library during the busiest periods of the semester.

“We noticed that we and many of our fellow students spent precious study time looking for seating in the S.C. Williams library,” says team leader and computer engineer Richard Sanchez.

But rather than grumble and head back to their dormitories, computer engineer Sanchez’ team decided to develop a system to solve the problem once and for all. Called Seatfinder, it's an innovative way of detecting what seats are available in the library that uses image processing to identify the presence of an individual.

With the assistance of Professor Bruce McNair, Distinguished Service Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Stevens IT department, the team deployed an IP camera with network connectivity to capture a live feed from the library.

After capturing images of the seating, the IP camera transmits a live video feed over a wired network to a remote computer using an open source application called iSpy. Next, a motion detection algorithm is used to trigger a snapshot of the live camera feed any time an individual leaves or enters a table in the library.

The team's code then processes the captured image to determine which areas are free or occupied, after which it updates a website with an image that represents occupied and empty chairs around the table. By checking the web site, other students can then find a space to sit and study a lot more quickly.

Having successfully proven their system, the Seatfinder team now hopes to add more cameras and monitor more tables to increase the sophistication of the system. Eventually they envision deploying it at other venues where space can become scarce, such as restaurants, movie theatres or parking lots.

But I can see even more opportunities for the system, one of which is on public transportation. If you have ever traveled on any form of rail transportation in any large metropolitan area during the rush hour period, for example, you will know what a problem it is to find anywhere to sit.

While the Seatfinder system can't obviously produce more seating on a full train, if some of our rail companies could deploy such a system in each of their carriages, it would reduce the time that hapless commuters spend walking up and down the carriages in the desperate hope of finding a spare seat. Those commuters lucky enough to be able to access a website from the train, that is.

Navigating through the underground

Getting to grips with the machinations of European underground transportation networks can be notoriously difficult for those from foreign parts, partly due to the fact that they employ systems that many visitors may be unfamiliar with.

And so it was when our industrious European Editor paid a recent visit to the beautiful city of Lisbon in Portugal to attend the European Machine Vision Association’s (EMVA) annual get-together at the resplendent Hotel Tivoli on behalf of Vision Systems Design.

After putting in a hard day's work listening to a variety of speakers describe the status of the image processing market in Europe, he decided to take a little trip on the local underground system to take in the sights of the city.

Sadly, however, his attempts to buy a ticket for the Lisbon underground proved somewhat unsuccessful, until, that is, a rather attractive young Portuguese woman came to his aid. Having helped our hapless European Editor purchase a pass for the train, the two then became engaged in a brief conversation, during which it transpired that the lady was planning a new life in Australia due to the lack of opportunity in her own country.

The decline of the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) has been widely covered by the media. But gaining a first hand insight into the plight of a single individual really brought the problem home to our European Editor.

Unsurprisingly, the data presented at the conference by Gabriele Jansen, the CEO of Vision Ventures and a member of the EMVA Executive Board, confirmed that the growth in gross domestic product in that neck of the European woods is predicted to be decidedly negative for the coming year.

Indeed, while most European countries look set to enjoy a modest growth of between +0-2.5%, Spain and Italy will be facing a growth of between -0-2.5%, while poor old Portugal will fare worst of all with a growth of less than -2.5% this year.

On the machine vision front, however, things aren't as gloomy. According to the preliminary data from the EMVA, European machine vision companies saw an increase in sales of 16% in 2011 compared with the year before.

As for 2012, it looks like there is more good news on the horizon. The VDMA (Verband Deutscher Maschinen- und Anlagenbau) -- one of the key industrial associations in Europe -- expects total turnover of machine vision products to be up 5% in 2012 over 2011, a year which itself saw a 20% rise in turnover from both the domestic and export market.

Germany, naturally enough, looks set to remain the number one market for machine vision systems in Europe, a fact that will undoubtedly mean that many bright individuals from the less successful regions such as Portugal will be attracted there to find their fortunes.

Those considering moving from the economically bereft European states to a destination somewhat further afield -- such as the lady that helped our European Editor on the Lisbon underground -- might be interested to note that the Australian economy is still on the uptick too.

Sick bay uses high-tech imaging

While the exploitation of vision systems has made inspection tasks more automated, those systems have also reduced or eliminated the need for unskilled workers.

But such workers won't be the only ones to suffer from the onslaught of vision technology -- pretty soon even skilled folks in professions such as medicine might start to see their roles diminished by automation systems, too.

As a precursor of things to come, take a look at a new system developed by researchers at the Leicester University as a means of helping doctors to noninvasively diagnose disease.

Surrounding a conventional hospital bed, thermal, multispectral, hyperspectral, and ultrasound imagers gather information from patients. Complementing the imaging lineup is a real-time mass spectrometer that can analyze gases present in a patient's breath to detect for signs of disease.

Professor Mark Sims, the University of Leicester researcher who led the development of the system, said that its aim was to replace a doctor's eyes with imaging systems, and his nose with breath analysis systems.

Even though nearly all the technologies employed in the system have been used in one way or another, Sims said that they have never all been used in an integrated manner.

Clearly, though, if this instrumentation were coupled to advanced software that could correlate all the information captured from a patient with a database of known disease traits, one would have a pretty powerful tool through which to diagnose disease.

The doctors, of course, would then have to find something else to occupy their time. But just think of the cost savings that could be made.