In Part II of this three-part series, Dr. Ned Lecky from Lecky Integration (Little Falls, NY, USA) offers insight into the selection of cameras and lighting for the intelligent transportation system marketplace.
Designers can influence the effects of filters on the optical performance of imaging systems by understanding the impact on resolution and other factors.
A three-station, noncontact system uses a pixel-by-pixel algorithm, laser triangulation, and area-scan cameras to inspect dinnerware for defects.
Vision-guided robotic systems are automating every aspect of meat production, from slaughtering to packaging.
One of my favorite episodes of the television series The Twilight Zone is "To Serve Man," a tale about the Kanamits, a race of nine-foot-tall aliens that land on Earth. In the episode, one of them addresses the United Nations, vowing that his race's motive is solely to help mankind.
To evaluate the performance of imaging devices used in cameras, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; Gaithersburg, MD, USA) are developing a Hyperspectral Image Projector (HIP).
The simple concept, which saw Microscan rewarded with a US patent (7,976,184) in July 2011, allows the top diffuser plates of Microscan's Edge-to-Edge Backlights to be interchangeable. The flexibility means users can now change the degree of diffusion for different applications without having to purchase a new LED light.
By combining a novel sensor with a computer-vision system, researchers in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (Cambridge, MA, USA) have created a portable imaging system that can achieve resolutions previously possible only with large and expensive lab equipment.
A multispectral scanner the size of a desktop scanner has been developed at the University of Oxford's (Oxford, UK) Faculty of Classics. It is now being commercialized by a new company, Oxford Multi Spectral, spun out tby the University's technology transfer company Isis Innovation.
Students at Rice University (Houston, TX, USA) have developed a vision-based tool that can be used for the qualitative analysis of a baseball pitcher's grip.
A team from Scotland is planning to travel to China in 2012 to provide 3-D scans of one of that country's most important heritage sites—the Eastern Qing tombs. In use from 1666 to 1911, the tombs are among the most spectacular in the world and are the resting place for some of China's most famous emperors.
Conventional parts manufacturing methods such as machining, casting, and forging have existed for centuries, but the process of selective laser melting (SLM) is still in its infancy. "However, where highly complex metal parts must be produced in relatively low volume—for example, in applications such as medical implants," says Tom Craeghs, a research engineer at the Catholic University of Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), "hybrid solid and lattice designs can be produced in a single pass using SLM."
Traditionally, electric power has been transmitted over copper wires that are expensive to install, require significant installation time, and are subject to intermittent failure. More importantly, however, there are many places where electrical power lines are impractical, such as powering unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs), or uneconomical, for example, where power must be delivered to distant, remote locations.
Traditionally, endoscopic vision systems have required standalone video processor units to capture and display image data. As images from a fiberscope are captured, the interstitial spaces between the fibers become more apparent and negatively affect the subject in view.
To reduce the amount of herbicide used in automated agricultural systems, it is important to correctly identify a multitude of plants and weeds. As a result, autonomous vision-guided robots developed for this purpose must robustly identify plants and weeds in unpredictable and often nonuniform lighting conditions.
