Machine Vision Computer For Industry 4.0 -----Envision the Future of Industry 4.0

High-Performance, Rugged Embedded Solutions For Inspection And Intelligent Computer Vision

Automated Inspection With high resolution cameras, systems can perform a range of automated inspection tasks in real time to ensure efficiency and accuracy in production. Automated inspection systems can ensure products are oriented correctly, identify mislabeled products, recognize defects and manufacturing errors saving manufacturers time and money.

AI Vision in Automated Optical Inspection Introduction

An important step in any kind of manufacturing is inspection and defect detection. In manufacturing of printed circuit boards (PCB) the task is carried out with machine vision controllers in and application known as Automated Optical Inspection, or AOI for short. 

However, with increasing complexity and use of compact components and boards, the task is becoming more difficult for machine vision systems to keep up.

Machine vision is often thought of as a kind of AI, when in fact machine vision is not actually intelligent. Machine vision requires every step and condition be programmed into the system, what is known as hard coded intelligence. As PCBs become more complex, the program can become more complicated and bulky, resulting in errors. With visual inspection, it becomes impractical and almost impossible to try to program every way in which a PCB could have a defect or fault.

One company is creating an AI solution to powering AOI. Their solution offers reduced time to setup and deploy, as AI can be trained to identify faults and defects. Ktouch has been working closely to help build and develop the hardware to power their AOI application AI.

Ktouch machine vision computers deliver unmatched processing and graphic performance. The Machine Vision series’ scalable compute capacity accomplishes complex and data-intensive applications to drive automation, optimization and insight in the harshest factory deployments. The machine vision series is primed for automatic product lines inspection, intelligent security surveillance, biomedical imaging and vision-guided robotics/vehicles.
	● High quality, durability and compact construction. ● Rugged design for harsh environment. ● Fanless and cable-free configuration. ● Wide range operating temperature. ● Easy installation and user-friendly development.
Machine vision computers supply efficient data processing and precision automation fueling Industry 4.0. Engineered and manufactured to endure the challenging physical conditions of a variety of severe environments, machine vision computers are high-performance, scalable solutions purpose-built to process and act on visual data. By consolidating numerous workloads within a single, versatile machine vision computer, points of failure and overall hardware footprint are reduced. Strong localized compute and low-latency communication yield more precise visual processing, generate real-time actionable insights, inform inference analysis applications and enable sophisticated automation.

Challenges

AOI is an intensive and demanding application. It requires not just high performance software, but a system that is equally powerful and high-performing. This creates several challenges to developing the system.

High Processing Demand

In order to process images and signals quickly and accurately, AOI requires a system with high computing power and processor performance.

Visual and AI Processing

To fully meet the needs of AOI, the system needs to support expansion cards, such as graphics/GPU cards or neural accelerator modules to process images and power the AI system.

Cameras and Sensors

Different machines have different configurations and components, from the numbers of cameras and sensors to the type. To meet the full potential of an AI powered AOI solution, the system needs to support a range of I/O connections.