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At the Vision show in Stuttgart, Germany, Vision Components launched its VC Z intelligent cameras. Te cameras are based on a completely new hardware design compared to the company’s older models, integrating FPGA logic and dual-core ARM technology with a Linux operating system. Jan-Erik Schmitt, managing director at Vision Components, said at the show that the new hardware approach was 10 times faster than that employed on the company’s older cameras. Vision Components’ new offering


is just one example of an area gaining traction in machine vision and one which was given great credence at this year’s trade fair, namely embedded vision. Te show, which took place 4 to 6 November, returning in a new two-year cycle, had a joint stand for industrial and embedded PCs, and embedded systems formed part of the panel discussion organised by the VDMA. Dr Kai Borgwarth, sales director


at Pyramid Computer, a provider of industrial PCs, said that there was a drive to use more embedded systems for machine vision. Speaking during the panel discussion, he said that, with new image sensors outputting more data, CPUs can’t keep up and that GPUs or FPGAs are oſten needed for additional processing power. And camera sensors can now


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from Vision 2014 Embedded vision highlighted


at Vision 2014 The Vision show returned in November in Stuttgart, Germany as part of its new two-year cycle.Greg Blackman reports from the trade fair, where embedded vision and 3D imaging were both key topics of discussion


generate an awful lot of data – while an extreme example, On Semiconductor was displaying a 47 megapixel CCD able to image the individual sub-pixels comprising a flat panel display, while Teledyne Dalsa was showing a 16k line scan camera operating at 2GB/s data throughput. Te Piranha line scan camera was among the first products using the high-speed Camera Link HS interface. Tese products wouldn’t


necessarily be part of an embedded system, but even using standard CMOS sensors an embedded


The trade fair


attracted 8,700 visitors, a growth of around 25 per cent


machine might still need to offload some of the processing to an FPGA. Te advantage of embedded


systems is that they can meet image processing requirements while at the same time shrinking the size of the device and reducing cost. An ARM board, for example, means vision engineers can develop and program their own embedded imaging system, with their choice of sensors and custom image processing algorithms. Vision Component’s VC Z


4 Imaging and Machine Vision Europe • December 2014/January 2015


Exhibitors at the Vision show


cameras are equipped with a Xilinx Zynq module for real-time image processing, consisting of an ARM dual-core Cortex-A9 processor operating at 866MHz and an FPGA. Also on the show floor, Allied


Vision Technologies, rebranded as Allied Vision, was exhibiting its Vimba SDK, the latest version of which supports ARM platforms and programming on Linux PCs. Dr Dietmar Ley, CEO of Basler,


said that embedded vision technology will become relevant because it allows customers to lower the cost of ownership of machine vision. Dr Ley said that lower-cost embedded vision will enable machine vision to enter many more applications. Basler launched its Dart camera


series at the show, which, while not embedded vision, is available from €99. Basler’s USB 3.0 cameras use Aptina CMOS sensors with 1.2 to 5 megapixel resolution and speeds of up to 54 images per second. Te board- level variant measures just 27 x 27mm and weighs 5g. Ley said manufacturing lines are


now much more flexible, able to accommodate a variety of different products, so inspection systems must match this – algorithms and lighting have to be able to be changed easily, requiring a much more complex vision technology. Computing company, Xilinx, was


exhibiting for the first time at the trade fair, with the company’s Zynq platform also demonstrated on other stands. MVTec was inviting visitors to see how optical character recognition algorithms in the embedded version of Halcon machine vision soſtware, running on a Zynq platform, transforms handwriting into machine readable characters. Silicon Soſtware was also


demonstrating its Visual Applets Tool, which provides a graphical programming approach for constructing a vision pipeline inside the Zynq FPGA. Other companies were exhibiting


products that made use of FPGAs for additional processing power. Matrox Imaging launched the RadientPro CL vision processor, which hosts an


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Messe Stuttgart


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