Three steps to Vision

You know you need to use machine vision – perhaps the Quality department has told you, or maybe it took a customer to point how slow you’ve been to adopt new technology – but how do you get started?

In an effort to drum up more business, German machine vision components distributor Rauscher has published a “How to develop, test and deploy your first system” guide. I have a feeling this is actually based upon something Matrox put out a while ago, but regardless of its provenance, it’s a useful paper for the vision novice.

Step one is the usual “figure out your needs” kind of thing (which would benefit from a little more project management thinking,) but step two is the part I really like. This covers the need to carry out feasibility tests – how else do you figure out what hardware you need? – and stresses the importance of having a box of vision toys to play with at your desk or bench.

Step 3 is deployment, and here again the paper is rather light. But brevity shouldn’t be a sin: think of this as a launchpad rather than the definitive guide. Everyone has to start somewhere.