Handbook of Machine and Computer Vision, 2nd Edition

Chapter 10Machine Vision in Manufacturing

Peter Waszkewitz

Robert Bosch GmbH, Robert-Bosch-Platz 1. 70839, Gerlingen-Schillerhöhe, Germany

10.1 Introduction

The preceding chapters have given a far-reaching and detailed view of the world of machine vision, its elements, components, tools, and methods. A lot of the connections between the topics of the individual chapters have already been explored, for example, concerning the interactions of light, object surfaces, optics, and sensors. At this point, then, we have everything we need to create machine vision systems. But, of course, a machine vision system is not created in a void without relations to and constraints from the outer world, nor is it made up and determined by image processing components alone.

This chapter will try to illustrate the environment in which the tools, Technologies, and techniques presented in the previous chapters are applied and give a view of machine vision as a part of automation technology – admittedly with a certain bias toward (German) automotive applications; most of it should translate easily to other industrial environments, though.

The vast variety of existing and possible applications and solutions in this field renders any claim to completeness meaningless. This chapter will therefore try to give an idea of issues that may arise in the design of a machine vision system, what they may be related to, how they have been solved under particular circumstances, and what to watch out for. We will ...