blog.inspect-online.com » surveillance

Vision(s) of the Future

stephanienickl — Mon, 31 May 2010 11:53:09 +0000

Top-Line growth despite the recession could be registered during this past year in the so-called non-manufacturing applications of image processing and machine vision. A presentation of the first results – still preliminary – of the annual market study conducted by the EMVA, given by Director of Market Research Andreas Breyer at the business conference of the association in Istanbul this past April, has shown a respectable increase from about 12% to about 19% of total sales of European machine vision by these sectors in 2009. This number, a fifth of the industry´s sales result after all, is even more remarkable considering that the market data is gained predominantly in the area of “industrial” machine vision. Companies being active mainly in areas such as life science, security, surveillance, document management as well as ITS, logistics and military, are not even covered by the EMVA survey. This is based in the historical roots of the association. Both, the European association EMVA as well as the German VDMA sub-group “Industrielle Bildverarbeitung” (Industrial Vision/Machine Vision) have their roots in the “traditional” markets of factory floor quality control automation that started about 20 years ago. These “seeing machines” are today an integral part of modern production technology. Even more: the major part of automated processes for the manufacturing of all kind of products – from toothbrushes up to complete automobiles – would not even be feasible without the vision technologies. The golden days of annual strong double-digit growth, however, have come to an end. The American industry association AIA has forecasted a very moderate growth of 3% for 2010; their European counterparts still expect an increase in turnover at about 11% for this year. Beyond the traditional feeding grounds of machine vision, however, the world moves at a whole different pace. Allow me to hazard the prediction, that we will see imaging technologies in every aspect of our daily life ten years from now. Small airborne robots will be used to automatically visually detect structural damages on buildings from above, guided by robot vision in the first place. Vehicle flow on the main traffic arteries will be steered by individual on-board cameras based on data from the higher-level traffic surveillance camera infrastructure. Our vacation planning will be done at 3D monitors within the augmented reality environment of the trip´s destination having been fully digitized by 3D scanners. Miniaturized cameras regularly circle around inside our body and send out warning messages as soon as they detect something out of the order. Utopia? Maybe so. Maybe it will take ten years instead of twenty, but maybe this vision of the future is not yet even close to what will really evolve. Already today a vacuum cleaner can be obtained at Amazon for a mere 300 Euros that is guided through my place by vision. My cell phone is able to identify my vis-à-vis by face recognition, find him in my address data base and spare me the embarrassment of having to reply to a joyful salutation at the trade show booth with a sheepish “Sorry, what was your name again?”.

Gabriele Jansen

Machine Vision and beyond

gabrielejansen — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:34:05 +0000

Machine vision is generally understood as image processing for industrial applications, as opposed to the so-called non-industrial applications of for example medicine, surveillance, traffic, entertainment, to name only a few. However, also these areas are in fact industries, only not production oriented ones. And the term Machine Vision could also be understood as “machines that see”, whatever they see in whichever industry or application as long as it is an automated process. This broadening of a definition would directly lead to a huge broadening of what is today considered the Machine Vision Market and a large group of additional players could be suddenly seen on the field.

Is this useful or not ? For a trade journal ? For an association ?

Let´s face the question by taking a closer look into these other areas of application for the technologies we usually cover with INSPECT (www.inspect-online.com).

The INSPECT magazine 03/08 is focused on a wide range of different applications beyond production. Besides the target of generating profit quite a few of these applications directly or indirectly provide for a safer world, a cleaner environment or improved medical treatment. The combination of fast 3D stereo tracking in combination with tissue simulation in virtual reality for example allows for the first time ever to practice eye surgery until proficiency is reached like pilots practice mastering the airplane before their first real take-off. With the increase of age-related eye problems if only by the shift in the age pyramid, millions of us will be very happy about this in the future.

A totally different and yet machine vision empowered tool to make our world a safer place is the equally respected and loathed speed control. Speed measurement, number plate recognition and driver face capturing are all optical and machine vision tasks. As much as these curbside boxes cost us frequent drivers and as much as we might curse it for again getting us in the one moment of lowered attention, I think we still agree that thousands of lives are saved because of the presence of these speed cameras.

Recycling is one way to get our energy balance back on track and glass recycling yields especially high potential. Did you know that with each ton of recycled glass the emission of greenhouse gasses is reduced by 200 kilograms ? This, however, is only made possible by very fast and highly accurate optical sorting of the secondary raw material.

These and many more equally important equally interesting applications are covered with the magazine. Among them also the meanwhile famous Stasi (i.e. Ministry for State Security, German Democratic Republic) puzzle, the vision empowered reconstruction of 45 Million torn or shredded Stasi documents. A topic very intertwined with our country´s recent history, yet not as German as one could think at first glance.

So coming back to the question: does the definition of Machine Vision need to be extended? Why don´t you share your thoughts on this and other “vision related” matters with other experts either here or in our newly established INSPECT community at http://network.inspect-online.com.

Looking forward to meet you there,

Gabriele Jansen