Low cost imaging solutions for quality control

The highest barriers to widescale implementation of quality assurance computer vision systems has been cost. This is closely followed by the level of difficulty of putting a complete imaging system together. As anyone who has ever been in the position of creating a vision system knows, the various bits and pieces supplied by the many vendors are not under any type of standardization control, and many vendors are criticized for the creative writing appearing on their data sheets. In short, unless you are an expert in imaging, electrical interfacing, computers, digital signal processing, and high speed storage techniques, you will likely spend more money trying to do it yourself rather than buy the exceedingly expensive systems available. Another alternative has begun to make headway into the imaging market. The growing investment in CMOS-based imagers is addressing both the cost and the system integration difficulties. This paper discusses the benefits gained from CMOS-based imaging, and how they are already being applied to improving quality control.