The president of the small to medium-sized machine builder had always made himself a reasonable living from developing custom-based vision systems to inspect one particular type of widget.And although the market for such widget inspection systems wasn't all that large, his system, or variants of it, had been purchased and widely used by most of the widget makers in the industry.Recognizing the fact that the Internet might provide his company w...
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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 tha...
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Many years ago, whilst working on an electronics journal in the United Kingdom, I was invited to a press conference to witness the unveiling of what was claimed to be the next big thing in electronic systems. To ensure that as many folks turned up as possible, the organizers of the event decided to hold the conference at one of England's famous race tracks, where they invited the press to remain after the company presentations to enjoy t...
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When I was a little lad, there was nothing I enjoyed more than playing in a sandbox in the back yard of my parents' house during the summer. That old sandbox became a place where I could construct my own virtual worlds filled with castles, mountains, river and oceans. It was, as I recall, jolly good fun.But in this age when computers dominate most every aspect of our lives, it should come as no surprise that even the humble sandbox has now bee...
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There's no doubt that autonomous robots fitted out with vision systems can perform some pretty useful tasks. For the military, such robots can help prevent injuries in the battlefield by providing soldiers with a remote insight into the nefarious misdoings of the enemy. On civvy-street, they can be used for the equally important purposes of improving the environment or keeping the borders of countries safe.But these conventional robots a...
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