Common Vision Blox
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Common Vision Blox is a set of configurable software tools that can be used to develop powerful machine vision applications. Thanks to technological advances in the PC world, software-based vision algorithms can now attain processing speeds that are comparable or better than those of dedicated vision processing hardware. Common Vision Blox establishes a universal software platform for machine vision applications comprised of algorithms that have been forged from thousands of installed turnkey applications. These tools offer the speed, accuracy and reliability that comes only from extensive integration experience. Common Vision Blox is perfect for OEM's, system integrators and volume end users that demand maximum flexibility and customization capabilities in a machine vision system.

Example application: Object detection

Ease of Use, Flexibility and High Performance
Common Vision Blox uses visual programming environments to simplify and accelerate the development process. Using Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual C++, or Borland Delphi, developers can easily create Microsoft Windows graphical user interfaces to customize their own applications or to fulfill unique customer requirements. tools are available in Smart and Lite formats. Smart Tools offer reduced development times and can be used by less experienced programmers. Lite Tools offer maximum control at the development level and maximum potential efficiency.

Hardware Independence
Common Vision Blox supports a wide variety of acquisition hardware, motion control hardware, digital I/O hardware and lighting hardware. Hardware from different vendors can be interchanged by simple using a different driver, giving a wide choice of price/performance combinations and complete control over you hardware costs. Providing an open standard for handling hardware and image data allows you to concentrate on application specific software development.

Open Environment
Common Vision Blox allows existing and new vision algorithms to be incorporated in a matter of minutes with the Vision Tool Integration Kit. Tools can be integrated as ActiveX controls or DLL's. Because Common Vision Blox utilizes the Visual Basic, Visual C++ or Borland Delphi environments, developers have access to thousands of third party components that can be used side by side with Common Vision Blox in your application. New tools can use the Common Vision Blox Protection Device as a key to protect the companies investment.

Field Proven Technology
Common Vision Blox tools were first released in 1993 and represent hundreds of man years of development effort. This comprehensive suite of vision tools has been used to create thousands of installed applications across North America, Europe and Asia. Our own Applications groups in the USA, Europe and Japan have used Common Vision Blox tools extensively to create turnkey products for our customers. This approach gives us a unique feedback advantage, ensuring Common Vision Blox really works for real-world vision problems.

Regions of interest All processing and analysis can be restricted to one or more ROI Position and size of the ROIs specified either graphically or through code Rectangular and square ROIs Circular and oval ROIs Doughnut and oval Doughnut ROIs All ROI shapes can be rotated to any angle any ROI can be automatically placed relative to other object locations. Calibration Each camera can be individually calibrated with up to 4 coordinate systems Device coordinates (raw pixels) Logical coordinates (pixels with optical distortions removed) Physical coordinates (real-world units - mm, inches etc) Object coordinates (real world units relative to position/angle of a part located within the image) Tool results can be returned in any of the coordinate systems Motion Control Up to 6 axes supported (X,Y,Z,roll,pitch,yaw) Different stage types - XY,XYZ,XYY etc Different drive methods - half step, micro-step or servo Hardware independent graphical and code interface Movement status, jog increments, current position Integrated Alignment algorithms RS232 or RS485

Image Handling Live/Grabbed Image Display Interaction with Regions of Interest Overlay of result graphics Direct Draw with flicker free overlay and pan/scroll/zoom Stretch to Fit/Zoom/Pan Read/Write BMP, TIF, etc Image Processing Point, Spatial and multi image operations Arithmetic operations, e.g. Add Multiply etc Logical operations e.g. XOr, And, etc Morphological operations e.g. Erode, Open etc Enhancement operations e.g. Sobel, Sharpen etc Geometric operations e.g. Flip, Unwrap, Polar etc Finding maximas in an image Image Statistics Histogram display Extract individual Histogram frequencies Mean, Mode, Min, Max etc Statistical Operations on multiple images eg Min, Max, Mean, Variance