A Comprehensive Guide
Aimed at developers of machine-vision and image-processing systems, our Buyers Guide contains information on more than 700 manufacturers of vision products, along with almost 400 vision system integrators and more than 100 manufacturers’ representatives. These companies come from 33 countries and sell in excess of 190 different categories of products covered in Vision Systems Design.
This Guide contains three sections: a Product Guide, a Vendor Directory, and a System Integrator Directory. While the Table of Contents provides a general guide to these sections, the Product Index (see page 179) contains a detailed reference list of the product categories.
For continually updated and comprehensive coverage of vision products, visit the Product Center on our web site: www.vision-systems.com. Here you will find a digital version of the Buyers Guide, our Industrial Camera Directory, a Product Showcase, and daily updates of new product announcements. You can also register to receive our twice-monthly Vision+Automation Products E-Newsletter, which highlights recently introduced machine-vision components.
Focus on test
This Buyers Guide issue also includes a series of articles that discuss emerging technologies and innovations. Test and measurement practices—the critical yet often overlooked aspects of machine vision—are the focus of these articles.
In the first article, Norman Koren and Randy Bockrath at Imatest describe the use of test charts and software to evaluate the quality of images captured by CCD and CMOS sensors. An article by Greg Hollows of Edmund Optics and Stuart Singer of Schneider Optics explains how to obtain the highest quality image by determining how to best match a lens to an image sensor, given the increasingly smaller pixel sizes of CCD and CMOS devices.
In their article, Javier Oliver and his colleagues at AIDO describe a system to evaluate the brightness distribution from a variety of lighting products, including LED ringlights and linear arrays. Finally, editor Andy Wilson discusses a benchtop test system developed by Sarnoff that allows image sensors and cameras to be characterized. Such systems will allow camera vendors and their customers to compare the performance of these products according the European Machine Vision Association’s 1288 standard.
As this Buyers Guide and our web site demonstrate, we provide a comprehensive and global source of information about machine-vision products and how to integrate them into high-performance imaging systems. Manufacturers of these products and machine-vision system integrators can continue to rely on Vision Systems Design to provide such critical information throughout the year.
W. Conard Holton, Editor in Chief
[email protected]