A question about motherhood and apple pie

“Motherhood and apple pie” is a phrase Americans use to describe things that few would disagree with. It’s often used as a way of saying that someone is stating what my English colleague calls “the bleedin’ obvious.” And it applies to an article in the latest Vision & Sensors newsletter from Quality magazine, “Vision & Sensors: Machine Vision Tips: Advances in Vision Sensing” (September 1^st, 2011.) Now that’s an attention-grabbing title, so I dived right in, and boy was I disappointed.

I was expecting to read about, well, advances in vision sensing, but what I got was a primer suitable for someone very senior in an organization, like my bosses boss. All the article told me was that cameras make great sensors, they can do lots of neat stuff and I should be using them in production. (I’m half expecting said bosses boss to email it to me with a note saying, “We should look into this.”)

But am I being too hasty? Is there still a need for management guides to machine vision? Do people still want to read vision primers?

Google says that each month 74,000 people search on the phrase “What is machine vision”, so perhaps there is a demand. You know what this means don’t you? Look out for my N part series titled “What is Machine Vision? A Management Guide.”