The official definition of “machine vision” encompasses all industrial and nonindustrial applications in which a combination of hardware and software provide operational guidance to devices in the execution of their functions based on the capture and processing of images. In short, machine vision helps companies manufacture quality goods, repeatably. And since companies that manufacture defective goods don’t last long, the manufacturing world has turned to machine vision for the quality (re)assurance it needs. But before a company can fully utilize machine vision, it needs to understand the basics.
For example, modern machine vision systems rely on digital sensors inside industrial cameras with specialized optics to acquire images. After an image is acquired, computer hardware and software process, analyze, and measure various characteristics of the image for the purposes of automated decision-making.