At its simplest, automation means to make something automatic. In manufacturing, whether describing a single device or an entire system or process, automation refers to performing one or many tasks autonomously with minimal or even no human interaction in a manufacturing or production environment.

The renewed interest for vision guided robotics (VGR) for the manufacturing of parts and packaging of goods is much in part to the number of advances in sophisticated technologies over the last decade. 

Manufacturing often involves the fabrication of products that are made up of multiple smaller parts or components. Assembling these parts into finished products can be complex and labor intensive. 

Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) are the latest innovation that have been transforming traditional robot tasks through increased flexibility and diversified applications, including their unique ability to navigate in an uncontrolled environment with a higher level of understanding. 

Machine vision quality assurance systems have excelled at automating the location, identification, and inspection of manufactured components through computational image analysis.

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.

Lens and camera sensor technology tends to co-evolve. As cameras drive to smaller and smaller pixel sizes with growing formats, lenses need to be designed to match those higher capabilities. 

In today’s manufacturing environment, automatic vision inspection has been widely applied in many different industries including semiconductor, electronics, food and beverage, pharmaceutical packaging, automotive, and many others.

Machine vision processes have become standard practice in quality assurance. Inspecting reflective surfaces, however, presents a challenge. A technology known as deflectometry can be used to reliably detect all types of defect even in these circumstances.

Lighting and lighting control is a critical component of any machine vision system since it has a massive influence on the signal to noise ratio and contrast in the images acquired.