Entries for the 'Vision Inspection' Category

 As many of you may know, we used last week’s Oktoberfest party as an unofficial house warming party for our new office space. In addition to having a great turnout despite uncooperative weather, the Kinect Demo team from FedEx Day 2010 put in some extra hours to get our new display case setup to welcome guests. If you haven’t seen the display case, an early video is available here,... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Anyone who has frequented my blog entries knows that I am one of the biggest robot-enthusiasts at DMC. That's why I was so excited to get a chance to attend a lecture at the Museum of Science and Industry given recently by Dr. Minoru Asada, a top researcher in modern robotics and one of the driving forces behind Robocup, and Mr. Ken Nagasaka, of Panasonic Factory Solutions of America. Aside from ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

I recently developed a 3D void detection prototype system for the packaging industry. The system will measure the empty volume inside of a box filled with contents. Once this volume is known, a subsequent system can optimize the number of packing peanuts required to fill up the box. By using this system, the filling of boxes with packing peanuts can be automated. The Hardware and Software u... [Read the rest of this blog...]

DMC will join leading companies to host the National Instruments Technical Symposium that builds on the success of NIWeek, the worldwide virtual instrumentation conference and exhibition held annually in Austin, Texas, where the company is headquartered. NIWeek 2010 concluded in August with attendance of more than 2,500 people, who participated in hands-on training, interactive technical sessions,... [Read the rest of this blog...]

In RT-101: Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS), I provided readers with a brief description of the many benefits that systems running an RTOS can provide in harsh and demanding environments.  The bigger question is: in an industry saturated by PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers), PACs (Programmable Automation Controllers), Field Point controllers, Microcontrollers and many others, why should... [Read the rest of this blog...]

 I recently implemented a project where we were using a SICK Ranger camera to measure a part.  This camera works by measuring the position of light from a line generating laser on its 2D field of view and translating that to a height position.  This works because features that are higher and closer to the camera will be closer to the top of the camera's 2D field of view and thi... [Read the rest of this blog...]

 Eric Nielsen’s Real Time blog did a good job of hitting the major strengths and benefits of any system based on a controller running a Real-time operating system.  Here I’ll get into a little more depth, specifically for the capabilities these systems give in regards to distributed execution.

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One of our many areas of expertise at DMC is developing and integrating machine vision systems. Our focus is on offering the most effective solution for the application; we are hardware/vendor independent and are not tied to any platform. When selecting a vision hardware and software platform, the most important questions to answer are: What are the technical challenges of the application? How m... [Read the rest of this blog...]

DMC has entered an Integratror relationship with IFM Effector centered around their unique and exciting 3D Image Sensor.  This is an industrial, cost-effective Time-of-Flight Camera that measures the distance to everything in its field of view based on the time it takes pulses of light to make the round-trip from the camera to the object and back.  Potential uses include volume measurem... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Recently one of DMC's customers, LTS Scale, issued a press release describing the first fork-truck-mounted dimensional weighing system. DMC worked closely with this customer from the first stages of research through the development of the system and into product production, successfully delivering a flexible and robust system that met numerous design challenges along the way.  The s... [Read the rest of this blog...]

I have been working on a 3D vision application using the SICK Ranger camera.  My application involves precision measurement, so I want to get the best results possible from the equipment.  The Ranger came with a Fujinon 35mm lens which focused sharply in the center of the field of view.  However there was significant blur near the edges.  (The CMOS sensor on the Ranger is... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Recent press releases by NASA show how the agency is realizing the advantages of using Structured Light for 3D vision. A recent Nasa Invention of the Year was a hand-held, battery-operated scanner that they use to create surface maps of shuttle tile damage. The same high-speed 3D scanner technology can also be used for longer range 3D measurements.  NASA is investigating using this metho... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Matrox has added 3D scanning tools to the Matrix Imaging Library (MIL), version 9.0. The concept is similar to that employed in single-purpose devices by Mico-Epsilon and SICK. (see Two 3D Scanner tools.)   The camera images a laser line from an out-of-plane location and processes the line position and shape as 3D points.  The difference is that while the others process the line direcl... [Read the rest of this blog...]

I saw an amazing new 3d vision tool at the Robot and Vision Show today. It is the ifm efector pmd 3d.  This device is a 64X48 pixel distance sensor.  It operates by the time of flight principle.  A pulse of light infared light is emmited by the device which bounces off of object in the field of view and returns to the device through a lens.  Each pixel measures the time require... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Purpose-built 3D scanning tools are an exciting new development in machine vision.  People have been building their own 3D scanners for years with cameras and line lasers . Now a couple of integrated and factory-calibrated units are on the market which offer a great head-start to a successfull 3D scanning application. SICK | IVP Ruler E:  This is the integrated ... [Read the rest of this blog...]