An introductory guide for anyone who is interested in designing machines that have vision-enabled, embedded products, this book covers topics encountered in hardware architecture, software algorithms, applications, advancements in processors and sensors. --

As a graduate student at Ohio State in the mid-1970s, I inherited a unique c- puter vision laboratory from the doctoral research of previous students. They had designed and built an early frame-grabber to deliver digitized color video from a (very large) electronic video camera on a tripod to a mini-computer (sic) with a (huge!) disk drive—about the size of four washing machines. They had also - signed a binary image array processor and programming language, complete with a user’s guide, to facilitate designing software for this one-of-a-kindprocessor. The overall system enabled programmable real-time image processing at video rate for many operations. I had the whole lab to myself. I designed software that detected an object in the eldofview,trackeditsmovementsinrealtime,anddisplayedarunningdescription of the events in English. For example: “An object has appeared in the upper right corner...Itismovingdownandtotheleft...Nowtheobjectisgettingcloser...The object moved out of sight to the left”—about like that. The algorithms were simple, relying on a suf cient image intensity difference to separate the object from the background (a plain wall). From computer vision papers I had read, I knew that vision in general imaging conditions is much more sophisticated. But it worked, it was great fun, and I was hooked.

The second edition of this accepted reference work has been updated to reflect the rapid developments in the field and now covers both 2D and 3D imaging. Written by expert practitioners from leading companies operating in machine vision, this one-stop handbook guides readers through all aspects of image acquisition and image processing, including optics, electronics and software. The authors approach the subject in terms of industrial applications, elucidating such topics as illumination and camera calibration. Initial chapters concentrate on the latest hardware aspects, ranging from lenses and camera systems to camera-computer interfaces, with the software necessary discussed to an equal depth in later sections. These include digital image basics as well as image analysis and image processing. The book concludes with extended coverage of industrial applications in optics and electronics, backed by case studies and design strategies for the conception of complete machine vision systems. As a result, readers are not only able to understand the latest systems, but also to plan and evaluate this technology. With more than 500 images and tables to illustrate relevant principles and steps.

The second edition of this successful machine vision textbook is completely updated, revised and expanded by 35% to reflect the developments of recent years in the fields of image acquisition, machine vision algorithms and applications. The new content includes, but is not limited to, a discussion of new camera and image acquisition interfaces, 3D sensors and technologies, 3D reconstruction, 3D object recognition and state-of-the-art classification algorithms. The authors retain their balanced approach with sufficient coverage of the theory and a strong focus on applications. All examples are based on the latest version of the machine vision software HALCON 13.

With the demands of quality management and process control in an industrial environment machine vision is becoming an important issue. This handbook of machine vision is written by experts from leading companies in this field. It goes through all aspects of image acquisition and image processing. From the viewpoint of the industrial application the authors also elucidate in topics like illumination or camera calibration. Attention is paid to all hardware aspects, starting from lenses and camera systems to camera-computer interfaces. Besides the detailed hardware descriptions the necessary software is discussed with equal profoundness. This includes sections on digital image basics as well as image analysis and image processing. Finally the user is introduced to general aspects of industrial applications of machine vision, such as case studies and strategies for the conception of complete machine vision systems. With this handbook the reader will be enabled not only to understand up to date systems for machine vision but will also be qualified for the planning and evaluation of such technology.

This illuminating collection offers a fresh look at the very latest advances in the field of embedded computer vision. Emerging areas covered by this comprehensive text/reference include the embedded realization of 3D vision technologies for a variety of applications, such as stereo cameras on mobile devices. Recent trends towards the development of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with embedded image and video processing algorithms are also examined. Topics and features: discusses in detail three major success stories – the development of the optical mouse, vision for consumer robotics, and vision for automotive safety; reviews state-of-the-art research on embedded 3D vision, UAVs, automotive vision, mobile vision apps, and augmented reality; examines the potential of embedded computer vision in such cutting-edge areas as the Internet of Things, the mining of large data streams, and in computational sensing; describes historical successes, current implementations, and future challenges.

Vision plays a fundamental role for living beings by allowing them to interact with the environment in an effective and efficient way. The ultimate goal of Machine Vision is to endow artificial systems with adequate capabilities to cope with not a priori predetermined situations. To this end, we have to take into account the computing constraints of the hosting architectures and the specifications of the tasks to be accomplished, to continuously adapt and optimize the visual processing techniques. Nevertheless, by exploiting the low?cost computational power of off?the?shell computing devices, Machine Vision is not limited any more to industrial environments, where situations and tasks are simplified and very specific, but it is now pervasive to support system solutions of everyday life problems.