The Gold Standard of Error-Proofing?

One of the main applications of machine vision is error-proofing. By that I mean checking some or all of: part presence, orientation, size, shape or color prior to assembly. It’s important to avoid errors in all assembly and kitting operations, but perhaps none is more critical than in the dispensing (think kitting,) of pharmaceuticals.

That’s why I am impressed by the PASS Rx system from Centice. This system reads the label on a tablet container and compares what that says with what’s in the bottle. Obviously, a mismatch is bad and needs to be detected. There’s no room for false accepts!

The Centice web site is sketchy as to the details of the sensing technology: clearly there’s a monochrome camera that looks down in to the bottle to quantify size and shape, but this is supplemented by a “Computational Optical Spectrometer” which deduces what’s actually in the bottle. For those interested in learning more, click the white paper link on the Centice web site.

Obviously, this is a specialized machine vision application, but the concept might have application in factories around the world. Let me know if I’ve sparked a clever idea.