Bad shoes

VIDEO: With the aid of machine vision, long-term product testing strategies are essential to ensure that only the highest quality goods reach the market.

Editor's Note: Watch the video version of editor Andy Wilson's "My View" blog, where you'll get Andy's unique take on what's buzzing through the machine-vision marketplace or just what's been buzzing through his mind lately. You can also read Andy's "My View" as seen in the April issue of Vision Systems Design.

Hobbling around trade shows is very wearying, especially on the feet and connecting appendages. I should know. I have attended many such events and due to a lack of exercise -- coupled with my love of Dunhill International cigarettes -- have often been laid up in bed for days afterward. After one event my boss, Conard Holton, noticed that it was perhaps my poor choice of footwear that may be contributing to my condition. After months of procrastinating, I went to my local shoe store and found a rather nice pair of very inexpensive shoes. Even my boss had to admire how smart I looked.

This year, I realized that the early recognition of a potential problem was not confined just to my shoes but to the shoes of one of the world’s greatest car manufacturers.

A little knowledge

VIDEO: By adding intelligence to their products, vendors will reduce the need for software development by their customers while opening a path to even more sophisticated systems.

Editor's Note: Watch the video version of editor Andy Wilson's "My View" blog, where you'll get Andy's unique take on what's buzzing through the machine-vision marketplace or just what's been buzzing through his mind lately. You can also read Andy's "My View" as seen in the February issue of Vision Systems Design.

Anyone who has been involved with computer vision for a number of years will testify that much work needs to be done before machine-vision systems can emulate the power of the human visual system. Despite hardware advances in multicore CPUs, DSPs, GPUs, and FPGAs, researchers are still far from modeling how the human brain perceives and understands the visual world.

Yet many machine-vision systems require only simple measurement tasks to be performed. It is often not necessary to perform sophisticated image-processing functions to analyze image features. In these cases, simpler algorithms such as edge detection, histogram analysis, thresholding, and blob analysis can be used to perform a desired image-analysis function.

A possible inconvenience

VIDEO: Innovative 'new economy' ideas for marketing machine-vision products may have an unexpected cost--time

Editor's Note: Watch the video version of editor Andy Wilson's "My View" blog, where you'll get Andy's unique take on what's buzzing through the machine-vision marketplace or just what's been buzzing through his mind lately. You can also read Andy's "My View" as seen in the January issue of Vision Systems Design.

Several years ago, I had the pleasure of attending a talk presented by Chris Anderson, the author of The Long Tail (http://www.thelongtail.com/). If you have read this book, you will be aware of its simple but powerful message.

In essence, Anderson points out that the economy is shifting away from a focus on a relative small number of mainstream products and markets at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.

Take a bow

Editor's Note: Watch the video version of editor Andy Wilson's "My View" blog, where you'll get Andy's unique take on what's buzzing through the machine-vision marketplace or just what's been buzzing through his mind lately. You can also read Andy's "My View" as seen in the December issue of Vision Systems Design.

America's Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) encompasses radio and television stations that transmit some of the finest programming in the country. Before tuning in to the Fox News channel to hear biased right-wing reporting (while at the same time having a few laughs), I always check whether my local public station is broadcasting something more important.

One night, I tuned into a concert by Hector Berlioz called the Symphonie Fantastique being broadcast on WGBH in Boston. Conducting the orchestra was a certain Michael Tilson Thomas, an American conductor, pianist, and composer who is currently musical director of the San Francisco Symphony. (Watch the video below.)

An invasion of privacy

Editor's Note: Watch the video version of editor Andy Wilson's "My View" blog, where you'll get Andy's unique take on what's buzzing through the machine-vision marketplace or just what's been buzzing through his mind lately. You can also read Andy's "My View" as seen in the November issue of Vision Systems Design.

Once or twice a year I have the pleasure of traveling to Germany to visit companies and trade shows. To take full advantage of the trip, I often fly to England to visit my brother and bring him duty-free cigarettes. Since smoking is now banned on most international flights from the United States, the six-hour trip often reduces my nails to a fraction of the length they were on boarding the aircraft. (Watch video below.)

Bitter about Twitter

Editor's Note: Watch the video version of editor Andy Wilson's "My View" blog, where you'll get Andy's unique take on what's buzzing through the machine-vision marketplace or just what's been buzzing through his mind lately. You can also read Andy's "My View" as seen in the current issue of Vision Systems Design.

Before the age of information technology, the employees of many companies drove to work and, upon arriving, often spent half an hour gathered around the water cooler to hear the latest company gossip and scandal before retiring into separate walled offices to work. That is where socializing ended. (watch video below.)

The royal 'we'

Editor's Note: This month we launch a video version of editor Andy Wilson's "My View" blog, where you'll get Andy's unique take on what's buzzing through the machine-vision marketplace or just what's been buzzing through his mind lately.


Last month, I again had the pleasure of attending a very large trade show. There, as every year before, hordes of engineers demonstrated the latest machine-vision products. What makes this conference and trade show unique, however, was the fact that a large number of young engineers are present, many of whom have recently graduated from university (watch video below.)