Introduction to New Generation of Machine Vision Powered by Industrial 4.0 Autonomous Robots, Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence

In order to remain competitive in today’s globalised world, industries in Malaysia are rushing to implement Industrial 4.0 technologies in order to remain competitive with other countries such as China, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc. Industrial 4.0 promises efficient and fully automated product lines, accurate product inspection, real-time report generation, remote monitoring, control and troubleshooting, and many other benefits.

Autonomous robots, augmented reality and artificial intelligence are three key areas of Industrial 4.0 that is useful for performing production line automation, perform product inspections and other activities. New advances in machine vision technology is helping to expand the roles and scope of applications of these key areas. Machine vision is increasingly being used in the industry for performing measurement, inspection and testing due to rapid progress in image processing performance and reliability. Vision inspection systems have an advantage over other sensor-based systems due to its simplicity, cost-effectiveness in the long-run and ability to perform multiple tests and measurements with a single image, as compared to multiple sensors required for each individual measurement. The placement and orientation of the part also does not need to be as rigid as compared to a sensor-based solution.

The main purpose of this course is thus to provide an introduction to the basic theory and concepts of machine vision, from the viewpoint of a company in the medical product manufacturing sector, in order to give the right concept and understanding of machine vision to prepare participants for future training course on medical product inspection POC design and development.

Participants will first be introduced to the concept of Industrial 4.0 and machine vision, before discussing the business impact of machine vision to the manufacturing industry as well as various general applications of machine vision. The typical machine vision system hardware and software lineup will then be explained. The details of the components, settings, features and functions of each stage of the machine vision lineup will then be explained in detail in the following modules.

After the basics of machine vision system lineup has been covered, the various factors affecting machine vision system performance such as lighting, object and background characteristics, camera resolution, etc will then be discussed, as these can have a huge impact on the performance of the machine vision system in terms of accuracy, cost, etc.

The various application categories of machine vision in the industry and the features and specifications required by machine vision systems in each application category will then be explored. These will form the basis of forming the selection criteria for a machine vision system that will meet the requirements and specifications.

The course will then conclude by looking at industrial machine vision systems, covering topics such as the concept of recipe creation, different machine vision systems from different machine vision suppliers, programming methods used to create recipes for typical industrial machine systems, tools used when programming an industrial machine vision system and specific examples of machine vision applications in selected industries.