In Pursuit of Knowledge

Welcome to the Uniforce Sales and Engineering blog. On behalf of the entire crew at Uniforce Sales and Engineering, I would like to extend a warm welcome to you. My name is Sudeep and I am an Application and Sales Engineer.


When I was pursuing my Masters degree a few years ago, in one of our sensor labs, our group was given an industrial camera and asked to acquire images. We felt that our instructor was a "fool" for assigning us such a simple task of capturing images, but having absolutely no idea what an industrial camera actually was, we began searching for the "Click" button, thinking it was like an ordinary consumer camera. After rotating the camera in all directions, in search of the "Click" button, we finally realized that we were the "fools" and that the assignment required significant amounts of knowledge and skills of machine vision. This was the first time I came across an industrial machine vision system.

Many of us working in the field of image acquisition, processing, and recording may have little or no knowledge on this extensive topic. A few of us who have a significant amount of experience may not have knowledge about the new products that are available in the market today. My blog entries will mainly aim at imparting knowledge to novice as well as seasoned engineers.

Even though the basic architecture of image acquisition, processing, and recording has remained the same as its beginnings, various companies have been striving to obtain higher performance, higher speed, better resolution, lower noise, smaller form factor, better on board processing abilities, and easy operability. As a result, selecting a camera, frame grabber, lighting, and software has become a complicated chore.

In the following blog entries I would like to explain the different components that constitute an image acquisition and processing system. I have found that it is easier to learn engineering concepts if we relate them to a real world scenario or human body analogies. View an example of a very entertaining analogy from Jim Breuer as he explains the effects of mixing alcohol by linking it to a party. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g0AJPqKybs. Therefore, I would like to use human vision system to explain the concept of image acquisition and processing. Please feel free to give us your input by leaving comments or asking questions you would like to see answered or suggest a topic.

- Sudeep