If you own a modern DSLR or video camera, you’ve already benefitted from vast improvements in lens technology, sensors and the software/firmware that runs your camera. If you’ve been replacing older compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) with LED lamps—both plain and decorative—you’ve already seen some vast improvements in lighting technology. Put all these technologies together into a machine vision inspection system and add artificial intelligence (AI) into the mix, and you’ll be seeing some important advances in the next five years. In fact, some are already knocking on your door.
If you think about all the roles for machine vision inspection systems, one of the biggest is label verification. In fact, label problems still remain a top reason for FDA recalls. And label errors range from the simplest (e.g., wrong ingredient listing) to the sublime (e.g., out-of-registration inks), yet vision systems can be used to detect them all, and some problems will be solved with the help of AI.