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Consultant Don Braggins of MVS Consultancy reviews what was in evidence at the world's premier vision exposition.

Discusses the background of robot vision systems and examines why vision‐guided motion for robots hasn’t lived up to the early promise. Outlines the different types of robot vision available and considers the limitation of “computer vision” in most commercial applications. Looks at the difficulties of making effective use of information from a two‐dimensional vision system to guide a robot working in a 3‐dimensional environment and at some of the possible solutions. Discusses future developments and concludes that in the short term, it is probably the opening up of programming to a larger group of potential users, with the facility of graphic user interface, which will have the greatest impact on the uptake of vision for robots.

Two instances of the same problem being turned into a new technique for vision could be seen within a few yards of each other at the Hanover Fair in April. The problem is the old one of specular reflections in curved shiny surfaces such as painted car bodies. Unless one takes great care to provide highly diffused lighting, there will inevitably be at least one area which reflects an image of the light source directly at the camera, leading to problems of oversaturation and “blooming”, which spoils the information in the surrounding areas too.

Describes developments in cameras for machine vision, outlining the limitations of cameras designed for television purposes and going on to look at linear array and matrix‐type video cameras. Examines the techniques by which high resolution cameras achieve their results and also covers asynchronous triggering, stop‐motion techniques, ways of maintaining spatial digitization, finishing with the design of lenses and geometrical distortion.

New visual inspection techniques overcome the Nyquist limit to provide high precision measurement of component positions.

The Hanover Industry Fair attracts almost half a million visitors each year to look at well over 6,000 exhibits, so tracking down nuggets of interesting technology requires some fairly careful preparatory work. Fortunately the organisers have upgraded their electronic search facilities so this year it was possible to obtain a consolidated computerised listing of likely exhibits arranged in order of stand and Hall number — there are 24 different halls! As it turned out, all the items described came from just two halls — Microtronics (Hall 7) and Research and Development (Hall 18). The Fair continues to grow and there is no guarantee that these will be the relevant halls in future years.