Machine Vision - Applications and Systems

Abstract

Vision plays a fundamental role for living beings by allowing them to interact with the environment in an effective and efficient way. The Machine Vision goal is to endow computing devices, and more generally artificial systems, with visual capabilities in order 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. These elements lead a continuous adaptation and optimization of the usual visual processing techniques, such as ones developed in Computer Vision and Image Processing. Nevertheless, the fast development of off‐the‐shelf processors and computing devices made available to the public a large and low‐cost computational power. By exploiting this contingency, the Vision Research community is now ready to develop real‐time vision systems designed to analyze the richness of the visual signal online with the evolution of complex real‐world situations at an affordable cost. Thus the application field of Machine Vision is not more limited to the industrial environments, where the situations are simplified and well known and the tasks are very specific, but nowadays it can efficiently support system solutions of everyday life problems.