Image Processing Software

A machine vision, or computer vision solution is heavily reliant on software that is used to process and inspect images, document and store data, as well as provide feedback to PLC’s for machine system control.

When developing a vision solution there are three main software categories to consider. Which approach you use will depend on the vision inspection requirements and the skill set of the developer.

Other important factors to consider are timescales and budget for the solution. Here we are focusing on interfacing to a camera and inspecting those images. System software for controlling devices such as PLC’s and robots etc, all have similar software choices available but are not referred to here.

HIKROBOT MVS

Euresys eGrabber

Euresys MultiCam

Ideal choice for creating vision software solutions without the need to have software programming skills. They are also perfect for situations that are under strict time constraints where time-to-market is paramount. These products are able to accomplish this by providing an extensive graphical user interface for point ‘n’ click configuration of the camera interface and the processing tools.

Many also provide the ability to output inspection results via COM/Ethernet etc. Once the inspection ‘tasks’ have been designed you then enter an execution mode – without the need of development environments such as Microsoft Visual Studio (C++,C# etc). In execution mode an end user graphical interface is presented for both application control and image visualisation – again without any coding being required. Time-to-market is optimised.

All-in-one products tend to have a heavy visual presence which means it is easier to understand the vision task created than it is say reading native C++,C# etc. This has the added benefit of future proofing the solution where those other than the original creator of the task will be able to understand the flow of the image processing solution and amend if necessary.

This is not so straightforward when a solution has been written using programming languages. MVTec’s MERLIC is a prime example of all-in-one software, created to build a machine vision application without programming a single line of code.

MERLIC 5 UI Example

easyTouch Example

This is a set of image processing operators or functions that requires the developer to have good software skills in programming languages as well as an understanding of how to design software solutions from the ground up.

The most successful developers also have excellent knowledge of image processing terminology, techniques and algorithms. It is clear how this differs from the all-in-one approach mentioned previously. There are open source libraries available as well as fully supported and documented libraries such as Euresys Open eVision and MVTec’s HALCON.

While open source may be free of charge, there is no official documentation or support provided and no control over version release. This can be a significant downside for customers that require a known manageable state of the system software. It’s a cost trade off that needs to be taken on the merits of the customer’s situation. Some libraries also have an application that can run to allow the developer to try functions before committing to code. This is very useful when a library can have several operators offering similar processing techniques and the developer wants to quickly try them as well as tweaking the parameters.

Once happy, the developer then takes that function and writes it in native code. Hence, the cycle continues until a solution is created at which point the developer also must ensure an appropriate graphical user interface design for the end customer to use. MVTec’s HALCON goes one step further and has an integrated development environment (HDevelop) that is used worldwide. It enables cost savings and improved time to market.

MVTEC HALCON IDE

Euresys Open eVision Studio IDE