Smart cameras have emerged as simpler alternatives to PC-based machine vision systems, and currently represent the largest and fastest growing segment of the vision market. This shift is based primarily on the evolution of CMOS imagers and digital media processing chips. The technological advances have allowed providers of smart cameras to develop and offer extremely small, powerful and low-cost smart cameras that handle the most demanding, high-speed and automatic identification and machine vision inspection tasks.
While PC-based machine vision systems fit complex and centralized multi-camera automation solutions, smart cameras are ideal for distributed point procession applications. Where flexible mounting in space-constrained installations is needed, ease of setup, rugged industrial connectivity, and high reliability are of utmost importance, smart cameras are able to provide solutions that PC-based vision can’t. With technology advancements and increasing demand for affordable machine vision solutions, smart cameras have started expanding into various new industries. Beginning in the automotive industry, smart camera expansion quickly followed into medical device manufacturers, electronics component manufacturers, pharmaceutical producers and consumer goods packaging operations, to name a few. The array of applications has also been growing—from inspection for quality assurance, to gaging, machine and robot guidance, barcode reading, code verification and a host of other applications.